#he goes into what i like to call *damsel mode* | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anotherblblog · 1 year

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Ok, so I came to Japan to watch Utsukushii Kare Eternal and I saw it today. I don't speak Japanese and there weren't any subtitles but I wanna recap what I remembered in case other interfans want to know. I also haven’t read the novels so I only know seasons 1 and 2 of the story.

Spoilers very much ahead.

The opening scene is like the last scene of S1 where HiraKiyo are naked with a fuckton of tulle. But way more tulle in the movie than season 1. They're both also literally blanketed by the tulle. They are also laying around Hira's camera, and Kiyoi's necklace, and the duck. Hira goes to kiss Kiyoi and Hira is woken up from his dream and he's at work. Hira and Kiyoi are both at work and they are talking to the mentor and Anna about the other and it's a lot of intercutting scenes of them in the present both reminiscing and flashing back to season 1. No scenes from s2 are in the movie as I immediate recall. A few s2 scenes are redone like Hira saying "Kiyoi (sans kun)" near the other fans but it's different than the s2 version.

The HiraKiyo A plot as I think I understand it - Domestic happy life. Hira’s cousin is moving into the house so HiraKiyo look for an apartment together. (I'm not 100% on if she's moving in but she shows up and she and Hira have a talk and then soon thereafter HiraKiyo are looking for an apartment together). HiraKiyo take a bath together and ngl it’s really hot. Kiyoi does his shy look away thing after Hira kisses his hand but Hira keeps kissing his hands and shoulders. Kiyoi is turned away from Hira and facing a mirror and Hira keeps kissing and moving up on him and the camera gets in close as Hira is kissing Kiyoi all over. The camera moves away to the other side of the tub while they smash and you hear Kiyoi moaning Hira’s name. And Captain Duck is swept out of the tub by the fucking lmao. I think Hira feels guilty about losing the house so he cooks a lot of food (part of this scene was the bonus scene at the end of the Utsukare Season 1 special edit version). Kiyoi does get Hira to feed him shrimp croquettes. Kiyoi hugs Hira from behind while Hira is cooking. The under the blue cover scene has Hira mounting and starting to go to town on Kiyoi but he stops himself and walks out dejectedly. Kiyoi extricates himself from the covers is looks super flustered/turned on.

B plot is their jobs. Hira’s mentor takes some photos of Anna and later Kiyoi. Hira is an assistant for the Anna photo shoot (which honestly was fucking amazing. It was literally the expression “make love to the camera” it was in waterfall/pond and it was so hot and erotic and fun. Didn’t expect it but it was cool.) Hira doesn’t show up on the day Hira’s mentor shoots Kiyoi and Kiyoi is looking for him. Kiyoi continues to work with Anna but Anna gets pap’d with her secret bf and it seems like Anna having a secret bf is a big fucking deal. The fans outside the Anna Kiyoi set find out via twitter or something and then Anna cries alone a lot and the Kiyoi agency staff look very concerned and sad. Kiyoi and agent/manager/not as flamboyantly dressed one go secretly to Anna’s hotel and they have a talk. Then Kiyoi gets pap’d leaving Anna’s hotel so some people were speculating Anna and Kiyoi were together. Kiyoi is also facing some reprecussions from this speculation and he's super sad in his office perched on a windowsill reading twitter comments and posts about himself and Hira texts him and Kiyoi cries. Like the engine of the movie is the b plot after Anna gets pap'd with her secret dude and then people thinking she and Kiyoi are together.

That leads to the C plot/act 3 Hira’s stalker friend kidnaps Kiyoi. But for some reason he calls Hira to tell Hira he's kidnapped Kiyoi. (there was a lot of villanous monologuing while Kiyoi was bound and then the guy pushes him down and also kicks Kiyoi a few times before making the call). Hira goes full dark crazy Kira mode and shows up and beats the shit out of the dude. Kiyoi is pretty damseled in this scene and mostly just screams for Hira to stop and then Hira flips into cute "I live to serve you" mode and gets Kiyoi out of those ridiculously loose ribbons. Then the stalker dude is getting up and Hira is flipping back and forth really fast between Kira and Hira modes and ends up having to shove Kiyoi down and tells him to run while Hira and stalker dude fight. And Kira becomes like the terminator and is following the other stalker dude and beating him down but then he flips back into Hira and is walking back to Kiyoi while cutely saying Kiyoi over and over and other dude attacks Hira from behind and then stabs Hira in the stomach. Then Hira hallucinates Kiyoi coming to hug him (trailer scene) and it’s cut between that hallucination and Kiyoi literally screaming and crying cuz Hira is dying and then fade to black.

End phase/finale - Hira survives lol. Hira and Kiyoi help Anna out of her situation by having Hira’s mentor do a photo shoot with this random j-pop idol looking guy who ends up being Anna’s secret boo thing. Cougar fr. Then the end scene is a wedding themed photo shoot for Anna and idol guy. Then they ask Kiyoi to join them. Then mentor guy tells Hira to shoot Kiyoi and at first Hira can’t but then Kiyoi tells/commands Hira in Kiyoi's Dom voice and then Hira does and then they have a long photo shooting sequence and that’s where Kiyoi shows off his body. Hira graduates and he and Koyama (who is barely in the movie) have a "I'll see you around" kind of goodbye and then Hira goes to the riverside where Kiyoi is, a cherry blossom petal falls on Kiyoi and he picks it off like s1e1 and Hira is taking pictures of him and Kiyoi calls Hira stalker and they chat and then Hira leads them back to the school. And Hira confesses/declares/has a lengthy monologue at Kiyoi - he definitely tells Kiyoi directly that he likes him, while Kiyoi is like crying but smiling and facing Hira's confession directly. And then they’re about to kiss (all of their mouth to mouth kisses are interrupted or offscreen) and the teacher from season 1 is there at the school (for some reason at this unspecified date and time) and he is chastising them and then chasing them and Hira leads Kiyoi through a long series of slow-mo runs through the school while they switch/flashback into their old wardrobes - their full formal blue uniforms and their causal white/beige school clothes. And then they end up outside and have another water hose fight and that transitions into then hooking up at home? mouth kissing for the only time in the movie in a lot of tulle again. The ending sequence is their most high heat scene. Hira is kissing Kiyoi's chest a lot and a lot of mouth and neck kisses.

other blurbs

all Hira narration

No Kiyoi narration but Kiyoi did have a handful of scenes without Hira

Hira had a lot of scenes with him at work with his mentor and the other guy

Hira and Kiyoi I think re-have their season 2 fight about Hira thinking himself more as a fan than a boyfriend. Hira sleeps on the roof of his work building and then cooks ramen for mentor guy.

I think mentor guy might have had a thing for Anna and was maybe sad she has a boo thang and maybe Hira tells mentor he's dating Kiyoi so Kiyoi for sure isn't dating Anna.

I don't know if Kiyoi or Hira told other stalker guy they're dating. But both Kiyoi alone and Hira and Kiyoi exchanged words with him during the kidnapping scene.

the scene where Hira gets the "I kidnapped your boyfriend call" was really fucking well done. Hira is walking up stairs away from the camera when he gets the call and they drop the lights and make it super dark and that pans up into Hira's bangs and his Kira expression/kubric stare-esque and it was super cool

I think Yusei wears a shirt for Kiyoi that he also wears in his other series. The cloudy white and blue dress shirt.

The end sequence of Hira shooting Kiyoi was really fun and hot. Kiyoi takes off his tie and has it in his mouth with his shirt unbuttoned but tucked in so it's framing his abs. Apparently Riku directed that scene and I would personally like to thank him for his contribution to the arts

Kiyoi's theme wasn't in the movie a lot. The movie has its own OST and the movie songs share some melodies with the s1 ost but it was a lot of new music

the color grading was blue af. A lot of blue in the lights, glass, wardrobe, sheets, etc etc

I think Hira has told his cousin that he and Kiyoi are dating.

Hira, Kiyoi, cousin, and nephew all welcome and greet Anna after her scandal and Anna might hide out at Hira's place for a bit until Hira and Kiyoi do their surprise with bringing the idol into Mentor's studio

Kiyoi looks hella fond and proud when Hira interacts with Anna at Hira's house. And right in front of Hira. Later when Kiyoi and Anna are alone, Kiyoi says something including that Hira is gross and Anna agrees and Kiyoi blusters at her and she fondly apologizes

Ok that's the majority of what I remember. I am gonna see the movie again, so I'll update if I remember or see a scene I didn't recap here

Updated: the family member that comes to visit is Hira’s cousin, not sister. Thank you @ltrllynbdy

#utsukushii kare eternal #my beautiful man eternal

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manofmanymons · 8 months

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I have concluded, based on an incredibly small sample size, that Ryo x Minoru is not too weird to talk about on tumblr dot com, and that at least one other human being on the face of home, planet earth, not only tolerates but ships it as well.

So I'm gonna be annoying about them for a minute!

I think they're cute as hell! I constantly think about the fact that in non truthful routes, Ryo takes Minoru's teasing to mean that he hates him, but in the truthful route he knows Minoru's antics are his way of cheering him up! + Minoru getting embarrassed about getting called out for it is silly and adorable!

I totally hc that over time they do just have a very specific dynamic with each other that only they understand. Minoru bullies Ryo and Ryo calls him a dick but really that's just their version of "hey how ya doin" "alright"

If Minoru's not messing with him, Ryo will check in and make sure he's okay. If Ryo is ever quiet and doesn't snap back, Minoru will check to see if he's okay.

Except the catch is that literally none of their friends have picked up on this. They all just think "why does Minoru always single out Ryo to pick on" and "Wow Ryo really can't stand Minoru, can he?"

They're genuinely considering talking to those two about their behavior and getting to the bottom of why they hate each other in hopes of getting them to get along better, only for them to rock up to the next friend hangout like "so we're dating now."

Everyone has the most overexaggerated sitcom-esque "WHAT" moment. Except Miu and Kaito who gave up on understanding other human beings so long ago that nothing can surprise them anymore and they're just like "oh cool congrats." Saki is surprised at first but very quickly is like "ohhhh that's why Ryo never shuts up about Minoru." She thought he was just complaining about him a lot but no that idiot had a crush the WHOLE time.

Oh oh oh hc that like on the first day or so of camp, when they first becoming friends, Minoru and Takuma were just talkin about boy stuff, and at some point they got on the topic of like "What's your type?" And Minoru with 0 hesitation was like "definitely a hot girl who's calm and gentle and would want a guy like me to take care of her" while picturing some classic comic book damsel in distress (delusional teen boy moment).

And now finally, FINALLY Takuma can make fun of Minoru for something. Minoru goes too far sharing an embarrassing thing Takuma did at school and Takuma just interrupts him like HEY WANT ME TO TELL YOUR BOYFRIEND WHAT YOU SAID YOUR IDEAL SIGNIFICANT OTHER WOULD BE

And it shuts him right up ksksnf

Minoru is the only person other than Saki that knows that Ryo only actually means "leave me alone" about 20% of the time, and the rest of the time that just means "I'm not feeling great but don't want to/don't know how to talk about it" and will do the OPPOSITE of leaving him alone (coming over to keep him company).

MINORU BEFRIENDING RYO'S DAD BY MAKING DAD JOKES. RYO IS SUFFERING KSJSKDN

Boyfriend who doesn't talk much x boyfriend who won't shut the fuck up beloved dynamic

Once in a rare while Minoru gets a little overwhelming for Ryo to deal with, but he never takes it personally. He knows his bf loves him, he can just only take so much LOUD at a time. He has other friends he can hand out with while Ryo is in recharge mode.

...Minoru taking advantage of no longer being a single pringle to torment his friends with the "no bitches" meme. The first time Ryo is the one to send it in chat, everyone is like "NOOOO THE MINORUFICATION OF OUR BELOVED RYO HAS FINALLY HAPPENED, IT'S RYOVER."

Bc that's how youths today talk, I believe. /hj

Ryo...surprisingly sappy. Minoru thinking he'd have to remind him of their anniversary only to show up at his place and immediately have flowers shoved in his face. RIP Saki and Shuuji for being the main victims of Ryo talking about Minoru for an hour. The bastard can pretend to be totally normal about his bf in front of the others, but those two know the truth. He is very strategic about NOT telling Takuma jackshit. Both because he's a respectful little lad and knows that there are some things no one wants to know about their best friend, and because he doesn't trust Takuma not to share any cheesy thing he might say with Minoru.

Minoru, surprisingly, also doesn't tell Takuma too much in the way of his love life. School life, home life, fandom life, sure. Love life? Absolutely not. Too much of a "that's not the kinda thing guys talk about" guy.

Famous last sentiments before Takuma becomes an annoying guy who won't shut up about his own bf 24/7 but that's beside the point

I think neither of them would be big on pda. They both get embarrassed too easy. Even then they're dating Ryo still calls Minoru a jerk. Minoru increases the frequency of which he obnoxiously calls Ryo "senpai." They are both, however, allergic to petnames.

Minoru tried saying "sweetie" once at Takuma's behest, and Ryo made him swear to NEVER do that again.

..despite being too embarrassed to hold his hand or kiss him in public, Minoru WILL make random excuses to touch his bf. Stupid things like "your headband was crooked" or "there was an eyelash on your face."

I don't have a good conclusion to this post, just know that I think about them a lot.

#digimon survive #minoru hinata #ryo tominaga

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dreamwraith · 2 years

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Swagger Bishie idea round 2:

Dash is secretly dating Danny Fenton as a tense "I like you; gotta problem with that?" kind of stiff relationship where they're not sure if this is going to work or not, they're just testing the waters without actually letting each other in. Dash is out of the closet but doesn't want to be seen dating a loser while Danny is still in the closet and doesn't want Sam and Tucker to find out he likes this jerk.

Point is, totally unstable.

Somehow, a ghost finds out about Danny's secret boyfriend and decides to take Dash hostage to gain an advantage over Danny. (I'm thinking Ember?) The others in the class are like ?!?! While Danny is making a mental pros vs con list about exposing their relationship to save Dash or seeing how bad this could get (spoiler, he saves him, but he needed this illusion that he had a choice in order to sleep at night because the immediate desire to protect Dash was startling).

PROBLEM IS, the ghost calls Dash's boyfriend by name (Danny), and Danny saves him as Phantom. So the people watching this play out are like "Dash is dating Phantom?!" (Dash's thoughts are a little more panicked: "The ghosts think I'm dating a hero?! Is this going to be a regular thing? Am I going to play the damsel in distress until they get a clue?! What about during game nights?!")

Dash gets confronted by the other kids on dating Phantom after he's saved. That's cool if totally off the mark. He can't tell the truth tho because Danny is still in the closet, and he's as startled as Danny was earlier by the desire to protect his boyfriend. If he tells them the ghost mistook the wrong Danny, Danny will be forced out of the closet. So Dash plays along, boasting about dating the ghost boy, all the whole panicking how he's going to prove it without talking to Phantom first and hoping Danny isn't going to hate him for this.

Danny has his own problems atm because Sam and Tucker know Danny is Danny which means Danny is dating Dash. Really, Danny? Why the secrets? Tucker has been missing out on some grade A teasing material and he plans to make up for lost time.

Danny and Dash meet up after school and have a total panic about what the heck they're going to do. Easy solution, Danny says he knows Phantom and he can "convince" him to play at dating Dash, but Danny isn't ready to come out as Phantom either, and he's definitely not ready to see Dash catch feelings for his ghost half. Uncomfortable solution: "Maybe we should call this off..." but neither of them really want to after feeling how deep their feelings go. Harder solution: after witnessing Dash in trouble and getting Sam and Tucker's support, Danny tentatively comes out to claim Dash as his (Fenton's) boyfriend and clear-up the Phantom misunderstanding. Dash goes into protective boyfriend mode until Danny feels comfortable being out, and the story ends with the two of them closer than when they started.

Gonna be a fun story they laugh about later once Dash finds out Danny was Phantom all along lol

#Danny Phantom #dash Baxter #swagger bishie #teddy ghost #identity shenanigans #au where Dash isn't a total ass #missing the character development/ character redemption but it's mostly just meant to be a fun idea #maybe this happens after Dash's redemption #either way xD

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years

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my school works are piled up this past few weeks (graduating tingz) and i just started reading the deadlock novel it feels like i'm reading a sokkla fic every time Mcashe has a scene because they just give off the vibes skskskskksksks. BTW, what's your top5 fav scenes from the novel? PS: I'm smiling like an idiot while reading the novel ughh i hate myself

I KNOW, RIIIIIGHT?! *-* and don't hate yourself, my anon friend, I spent the whole novel smiling and laughing and losing my goddamn mind because I was having the time of my life xD enjoy this beautiful content as best you can!

I mean, frankly, Reunion already had all the Sokkla vibes I could've wanted/needed to ship these two like FedEx and I always knew I wasn't getting off this ride anytime soon. But gosh, this book... it gave me everything I wanted and MORE! Their dynamics are soooo similar to Sokkla team-up dynamics, two power couples kicking ass and taking names... oh, I just love it so much. I probably will end up reading the book a third time soon x'D

As for my favorite scenes, damn, this is tricky xD

KEYCHAIN! HE MADE HER KEYCHAIN!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! God, it's just amazing how the book explains the "vintage" look for Ashe's hoverbike the way it does, and that they literally built it together *screams!!!*, but then he gives her that keychain for her birthday present, and the implications!! THE IMPLICATIONS!!! He gave her a keychain she's held onto for TWENTY YEARS?!?!?! Ships in the OW fandom have sailed far and wide with less than breadcrumbs: we literally have been granted a boon from the GODS with all this extra context for the little things in Reunion xD

Ashe going to hell and back to save her kidnapped BFF-for-whom-she-totally-doesn't-have-feelings-yeah-yeah-sure-Jan. I love the fact that McCree is, in a way, Ashe's damsel in distress and not the other way around xD Of course, it's what you'd expect from an Ashe-centric story, but it's still an amazing sequence, all around. Gotta highlight how she loves the way he smiles like a madman when they have that shootout at the end, and how he worries so much over Ashe's injury when he took an even worse one than she did (the Sokkla vibes in that particular situation were SO STRONG! I SWEAR!).

"Jesse McCree, are you trying to make me say you're handsome?" "Am I?" ... do I need to say more. That FLIRTING. These two were on fire already and they'd only known each other for like... weeks, at this point? x'D He has no sense of moderation, he's soooo into her and doesn't hide it at all. Ashe is so busy trying to plot all the crime and Jesse's practically like a shojo heroine, "oh I can feel it, this is how my love story begins!", basically xD

Finally I pick a not-McAshe scene... to bring up the one where Ashe picks up the Viper on her last moment in Lead Rose Manor. That moment was just... POWERFUL. The feeling of epicness in that scene just overwhelmed me when I was reading it xD

The ending of the book :'D the fully formed Deadlock Gang ready for business, down to the explanation for the Est. 1976 in the logo... *sobs* the fact that so much about the character design choices in these two characters is a shoutout to the past they share is just... *gross sobbing* oh, I just love it to pieces, I'm not even sorry.

Ashe's bike race to save B.O.B. x'D that whole situation was bonkers but I looooved how fierce she was about protecting her one and only buddy while growing up (AND THAT JESSE BLUSHED WHEN SHE TAUNTED HIM WAS JUST THE CHERRY ON TOP!). I appreciated learning more about the Omnic War and its consequences, how Ashe reflects on having escaped it practically untouched in virtue of her money and societal privilege while her new friends all faced many hardships to survive. But I can't help but also love that, however uneasy others could have been about the Best Omnic Butler, Ashe was so fiercely loyal to B.O.B. that she nearly broke Julian's nose herself over his ridiculousness x'D That's HER big omnic buddy and she's not about to lose him to anyone, not her shitty parents, not a bet in a race, NOTHING! (and it's so cute that B.O.B. is just as loyal to her, too *sobs*)

Ashe grabbing McCree's arm to explain things to him on their first heist and him being all "you gonna leave that there?" and only then does she realize her hand's still on him x'D what a McCree line, and he was absolutely enjoying the attention, he doesn't even pretend otherwise.

Everything poetic McCree says or does... meanwhile Ashe's like "um yeah I don't care about poetry I want money", right until his poet soul totally smashes her square in the heart with the KEYCHAIN!!! But damn, I swear I thought McCree would hold back a lot more, and yet there he was, saying things like Calamity was brilliant and mysterious... you could practically hear B.O.B., Julian and Frankie going "I can see what's happening..." in the background xD

The conversation about what they wanted to do once they were loaded with all the cash they could possibly want. That one was a real number on my heartstrings. It ties up to what I said earlier with Ashe finally being in touch with people who are completely removed from the ridiculous social circles of her parents and her school, people who really lost a lot in the war. But where Julian and Frankie seem to look at the past a lot, I loved that Jesse is basically just thinking about the future. The fact that he says he wants to chill out in a farm and that this is what he wants in life... many, MANY, shippy wheels have turned in my head since I read that <.< maaaany...

WHEN JESSE NEARLY FALLS AND ASHE CATCHES HIM!!! UNDERRRATED AS HECK!!! The fact that he's taunting her about fear of heights, then he nearly plummets to his death because ironies are beautiful xD and Ashe pulls him back to safety only to say that she's not afraid of heights but afraid of ~FALLING~??? I mean, okay, sure, maybe I'm reading too much into that line... or maybe I'm not <.< either way, the truth is I just love how absolutely broad of interpretation that scene and that DIALOGUE are :> ehehehe.

Oh, their first encounter. The fact that it's so cute and fun, and that it's this low in the list tells you how GOOD this book was x'D "You've got an awful lot of grit for a rich girl," first words he spoke to the love of his life xD then how they talked and laughed together about the crazy stories he shared (she was crying of laughter for the first time in her life! precious girl!), and then how she sat in the car thinking about the strange feeling she was left with after meeting him... they seriously had a meetcute in prison, how can a ship get any better? xD

WHEN HE COMES BACK TO HER WHEN THEIR FIRST HEIST GOES WRONG!!! That Ashe expects him to just leave after she falls off their getaway vehicle, but Jesse saves her and goes "pfft that's just not my style", basically... *sobs* without realizing it she ends up picking up that particular philosophy of his, saving her friends no matter the cost...! Honestly, though, the fact that every time something like this happens it hits Ashe like a truck racing downhill with no brakes because she's NEVER been cared about by anyone but B.O.B. and she's completely new to friendships and bonding with people... and in the mean time, Jesse immediately is "ride or die" with her because that's how he rolls... beautiful relationship dynamics between characters who influence each other for the better are just beautiful :')

A silly one here: Jesse enjoying the good life in Lead Rose. That description of him looking like a marshmallow in the CHAISE LOUNGEEEEE!!! (the one he references in their in-game interactions *CRYING SO MANY TEARS*), was just too cute to bear x'D Ashe just jumping back into work mode... while he was just thrilled to be a marshmallow in a towel xD

... So, um, I went overboard because I love this book a little too much for my own good :> what can I say? When things I love are good, I go wild xD There's probably more scenes I loved, but these... thirteen? XD are the ones that came to mind.

I think one of my favorite things now is reexamining Reunion with all this extra context in mind. The first time I watched that cinematic I, of course, fell in love with these two outlaws because how could I not? But while subsequent rewatches revealed a lot of things I didn't pay enough attention to the first time around, the book has done even more than I could imagine possible for a short that was already as shippy as could be xD

Ooookay so, shippy ramblings about Reunion, coming up! (simply because I have to put these down SOMEWHERE XD and your ask was a good idea for that, anon!)

First off, Jesse very much staged the whole rodeo in Reunion. He sent the tip to Ashe, he wanted Echo's crate specifically. He thought they could work together, basically, despite knowing it was entirely possible that those hopes wouldn't pay off. This train, according to the wikia, was a government train, so Jesse is very much telling Ashe to give a finger to the government for all he cares, all he wants is one (1) crate.

Ergo, Jesse, for all his "nice guy bountyhunter" deal, doesn't disapprove of Deadlock's actions. If anything, he counts on them to be exactly what he needs in order to get what he wants. He practically trusts Ashe to pull off the train heist disaster perfectly and only steps up when it's time to collect Echo.

Then the wacky shoot-out happens, it's veeeery charged (the UST is so thick, I swear...), and Jesse wins. He ties up Ashe, floats her off on the payload with the rest of the gang, and he sets Echo free. He's helping her out very nicely and everything, but the context in question is... he received the recall notification thingy XD Winston called him back to Overwatch, and Jesse...

... Jesse doesn't want to go back.

Jesse says "they want me", and the displeased tone of his voice, paired with the look on his face when he says that line, speak for themselves.

That, in my humble opinion, isn't the sequence of expressions you'd expect from someone who intends to return to the group where he thrived, had the time of his life and found his true calling. To me, he actually looks irritated about the recall (the sequence of expressions during that line is much better when you watch the full thing x'D), as though he REALLY doesn't want to return. He's not against Overwatch, I'm not quite saying that, otherwise he wouldn't have set Echo free and told her to go back at all... but this isn't remorse. It's not "Oh, I'm not good enough for Overwatch anymore". Nope... this is "My time with them is over and I don't plan on going back unless I have no choice", as far as I can tell.

If OW2 does bring him back into the fold and he's a perfectly chill and happy guy about it, I'll seriously be surprised. I mean, he could have set Echo free and, once his business is over, returned to Overwatch with her, he could have been in the Paris cinematic if he'd done that...

But he's not there.

Which outright says he didn't do that :> oops.

Basically, I think Jesse's reaction in Retribution (where he's markedly the most morally correct one of the bunch, and he's the former outlaw :'D) tells you his displeasure with Overwatch ran very, very deep. And someone can very easily say he felt the same way about Deadlock and that's why he left them for Overwatch... but that's conjecture. His displeasure with Blackwatch (and, in consequence, Overwatch), however, is FACT. And the previous conjecture falls flat pretty quickly considering he's perfectly fine with Ashe's train heist, even sets it up himself, from what the story suggests, so... how ~appalled~ was he over her choices and actions? Not appalled at all, if you ask me, and after you read Deadlock Rebels, you actually understand why: Jesse trusts Ashe.

From the first moment she enters the same prison block he's in, he's drawn to her. He wants to impress her, he absolutely enjoys her company and making her laugh (just as much as she enjoyed laughing at his wacky stories), and he's plain thrilled that she comes back for him when she does. Ashe manages the gang with inexperience but she's always willing to improve, and you see Jesse sticking with her through thick and thin, supporting her at the best and worst times alike, always putting his faith on her and constantly watching out for her (he protected and shielded her from attacks with his own body sooooo many times *sobs*). Ashe starts out intending to keep most profits for herself, and Jesse doesn't care much at first... but then she starts to share profit equally between their team. She works on her own bike herself, her own ride, and she plans and solves problems as best she can, to a point of even going overboard with planning too much. She's wild, reckless and takes insane risks... and this guy loves every second of it. The matter of morality regarding the actions of a criminal gang is, of course, something to think about... but as far as the book goes, Ashe mainly targets her own family, their specific brand of bullshit, and in the process she ends up helping lots of people and even saving lives that might not have been saved otherwise. I'm not going to put my hand on the fire here and say Deadlock never ever did anything absolutely wrong to people who didn't deserve it... but for a criminal gang? They're honestly the most wholesome one the OW team could have come up with, if you ask me.

So where you see Jesse is very much antagonistic with Reaper/Reyes, where he loses his temper with the guy's choices, he doesn't ever do that with Ashe. Overwatch ARE supposed to be the good guys... so how weird that Jesse McCree, reformed outlaw, ends up so disappointed with these guys when he was actually thrilled with Ashe's managing of their gang, as far as we saw. So much so that, when it came down to it, Jesse McCree, 20 years later, still counts on Ashe to give him a hand (without her full awareness) with a little operation to help out an old friend of his. Also worth pointing out: he doesn't want to fight at all, while Ashe, of course, does. Deadlock for life, is what Jesse said... and he's not Deadlock anymore, hasn't been for who knows how long. Worse yet... his tattooed arm is gone. It's like all his ties to Deadlock have been severed.

And even so, he came to Ashe and hoped she wouldn't want a shootout with him. Even when he knows she might be beyond unforgiving because of the betrayal (he has seen directly how outraged she was about a certain someone betraying her in the book...), Jesse goes back anyway and hopes it won't come to this.

THE IMPLICATIONS, MAN!!!

Carrying on: Echo is surprised that Jesse shows no intentions of going back to Overwatch. She asks him what he's going to do... and what does Jesse say?

He puts his cowboy hat back on (the symbolism in this short, I swear...), and when she asks him what he's going to do, he tells her "I've got some business to attend to."

THE MUSIC PICKS UP.

AND THEN HE CLIMBS ON THE BIKE HE BUILT WITH ASHE.

YOU GET A DELIBERATE CLOSE-UP TO THE KEYCHAIN.

THEN THE CAMERA PANS UP TO FOCUS ON THE PICTURE, TORN AND TAPED BACK TOGETHER, THAT ASHE CARRIES ON THIS BIKE, A BIKE WHICH, LET'S BE REAL, IS BASICALLY A MCASHE BABY CHOPPER/HOVERBIKE HYBRID, AND AS SHE PUTS IT LATER, IS...

HER

BIKE!!!

When Jesse says he has business to attend to, he could pick up any bike he wants (since it'd stand to reason that the other guys Ashe came in with would have bikes of their own). He could escape on horseback for all we know xD so there are lots of options... but no. He takes HERS. Right after saying he has "business to attend to".

Look, I could be wrong. I could be dead wrong. I can absolutely be digging around and going INSANE because nothing I ship EVER gets this much content.

But we literally get a guy saying he has "business" to take care of, and the cinematic focuses exclusively on elements that, even BEFORE Deadlock Rebels, all point towards Ashe?! You could easily say that taking her bike is just the final nail on the coffin, his last trolling idea to mess with his one true love... but that picture is right there. That picture, with them in their youth. The picture, btw, was bigger than just them: B.O.B.'s hand is there. The top of the picture is uneven, suggesting Ashe probably tore it to shreds in a fit of rage... and then specifically put together THEIR PART. And then she taped that to her bike's dashboard. Meaning, she carries the goddamn memory of Jesse with her EVERYWHERE SHE GOES. And she does it WILLINGLY.

Which, in turn, answers why Jesse expects MAYBE Ashe wouldn't go full-on hostile when they meet: this trolling cowboy knows exactly what he means to Ashe. He's not surprised when he sees that picture on the bike. He doesn't toss it away, which he could have, if he were saying "we are history now, forget it gurl" (and let's be honest, what a dick move that would have been @_@), he doesn't flinch after noticing and then goes "yeah, no, I'm picking another bike".

NOPE. The familiarity with which they talk, the way he hopes she'll just let him walk away, the fact that she DIDN'T change the keychain and bike in all those years and he's not even SURPRISED...

Jesse knows how much she loves him, point-blank. He's completely aware of it... and he's very much okay with it.

So much so... that I'm something of a 90% sure that the business he intends to deal with is ASHE HERSELF.

And no, I don't mean he's going to go on another shootout with her... I mean, evidently, that Jesse wants to come home. That he's tried the life of Overwatch, and he's decided to leave it behind. He's turned bountyhunter now, vigilante, pretty much... but he comes back to Ashe all the same. He's come back for the first time in who knows how long (going by Ashe's expressions and sarcasm with the "you promised you'd write" line, it miiiiiiight be they haven't seen each other since he got recruited into Blackwatch), and he expected a peaceful encounter, no less.

A good question to ask here is... what did Jesse hope would happen, if the encounter HAD been peaceful? He would've released Echo, sent her away to her business, and stayed behind anyway because he had business to deal with. Which business? :'D why... the business that would've been standing right in front of him.

There's no other, logical reason why this cinematic would put Ashe and McCree's picture into focus right when McCree says what he does to Echo. There's no other reasonable choice why McCree would turn his back on Overwatch quite so firmly. We know he had two important ties in his life: Overwatch and Deadlock. And Overwatch stole him away from Deadlock for a VERY long time. Well over half the time Deadlock has been in operations, as far as I can tell. He picked Overwatch over Deadlock once before... and now, it seems he's picking Deadlock over Overwatch instead :')

The follow-up short, Roadtrip, doesn't do anything to change my mind. The trolling jerk, Jesse McCree, hovers past Ashe's payload, where she's just... complaining, as she hovers xD going by what I know of the game and that map, the payload may just be en route to the gang's hideout, so that, I'd say, could explain why she hasn't climbed off it or escaped in any way (which she reasonably would have, if Jesse was trying to, I don't know, send her and her people to the authorities).

My point here is, however, that Jesse is headed the same way the payload is. If his destination is the same one, he'll beat it there for sure. Maybe, yes, he'll go away and drive well past the hideout... but maybe that's exactly where he intended to go.

Maybe, in the end, Reunion is about a man who's finally coming home :D

In addition, goes without saying, Ashe's rant about how everyone falls to pieces over Jesse showing his "stupid mug" (uh-huh, stupid, ANGELIC mug, we know what you really think, girl xD) ends with her saying she should have "put a bullet in him the minute he showed up".

Which begs the question of why didn't she.

Then, of course, she says she hates McCree when he drives past her while listening to some really ridiculous honky-tonky-sounding music x'D I cannot even help but imagine him deliberately picking that radio station or whatever it was just to annoy Ashe when he drove beside her, and so that she can get extra pissed when she retrieves her beloved bike, turns on the music and it's just more honky-tonky stuff x'D but anyway, the thing is she shouts after him, tells him that's her bike and says she hates him. B.O.B. wordlessly speaks for us McAshe shippers by giving Ashe the most "sure, Jan" side-eye in the history of side-eyes, and Ashe notices and is outraged enough to knock B.O.B.'s little hat right off his head again.

Again... this is renowned outlaw Elizabeth Caledonia "Calamity" Ashe, sitting on a payload, groaning about the guy she once very much had feelings for (and that doesn't even begin to cut it, if you ask me x'D) and for whom she tooooootally doesn't anymore, that picture on her bike doesn't MEAN that, OBVIOUSLYYYY!!, and so, she sits up, complains and doesn't do much of anything to get out of her current situation, right? :>

So, summing up my current understanding of EVERYTHING, thanks to Deadlock Rebels and my obsessive rewatches of Reunion + Roadtrip:

Jesse deliberately sought out Ashe so she would indirectly, unknowingly, help him set Echo free from the government's clutches.

Jesse hoped for a peaceful encounter despite knowing he might not get one.

Jesse has no intentions of returning to Overwatch but was willing to perform one final act of service for them by releasing Echo so she'd go give Winston and co. a hand.

Jesse is NOT surprised to see that Ashe: 1. Didn't change bikes at some point in the twenty years since they built it. 2. Didn't swap the ignition key for a button, the way she says she thought to do it in the novel until he gives her the keychain. 3. KEPT THE POETIC AF KEYCHAIN, despite resenting Jesse for his betrayal. 4. KEEPS A PICTURE OF THEM IN THEIR YOUNGER YEARS PASTED ON HER BIKE'S DASHBOARD.

Jesse claims he has business to deal with: he doesn't clarify said business verbally, but every shot after he says those words focuses on elements related to Ashe... and then, along with the novel's context, it's elements related to their BOND. Everything in that shot, EVERYTHING, is connected to the two of them. Elements that weren't shown before or during their shootout, and that are only introduced in that final moment when McCree is off to deal with his "business".

Ashe doesn't climb off the payload or stops it (which, going by how McCree simply pressed a button, and Ashe isn't immobilized in the least, she easily could have done it too if she had wanted to). Suggesting that, wherever the payload is heading, it isn't anywhere dangerous for Ashe and her crew, ergo, she is 100% sure McCree isn't trying to screw her over by turning her in to the authorities or so (or, at worst, she's completely confident that, even if he is going to do this, she'll be able to get out of it easily).

Jesse drives in the same direction the payload is headed. Another hint that suggests he might intend to head to the Deadlock hideout and that, whatever business he has left to deal with, it involves them.

If his intent ISN'T to go to the hideout... Jesse is still guaranteeing that Ashe will come after him by stealing her bike, the 18th birthday gift he gave her, and the picture she keeps of them. That he takes that very bike practically serves as painting a target on his back for her to hunt down, and he KNOWS IT.

In short: Jesse will have plenty of business with the Deadlock Gang in his future, and going by how pleased he seems to be when riding the bike, he's perfectly happy to handle that business on his terms, whenever he wants to handle it.

Extra tidbit: there's nothing in Deadlock Rebels about Jesse's smoking habit, something he definitely did pick up at some point while in the gang because, hahaha, he IS smoking in the picture Ashe keeps of him :> Which makes me wonder why, of all pictures Ashe chooses to keep on her bike's dashboard, she picks one where he's smoking.

Then, it makes me wonder about the fact that Jesse deliberately starts smoking when he's standing right in front of her (and then he winks at her!). He tosses that cigar after things get kind of dangerous for him because B.O.B. does something, and then... then he goes back to smoking.

RIGHT WHEN HE'S CLIMBING ON THE BIKE.

Like... seriously...

*unintelligible fangirl screaming*

I could be looking too deeply into this. I know I could be. Maybe Blizzard just wants me to go CRAZY with little symbolism and hints charged with SO MUCH MEANING that maybe don't have as much meaning as I thought it did...

... But man, I've sailed into the depths of the shippiest oceans for many ships that have gotten actual breadcrumbs from canon. I've gone wild over ships that have zero opportunity to become a thing in canon continuity. I've written a nearly 3M words story based on a ship that is just UNEXPLORED AMAZING POTENTIAL and ngl, I love exploring it myself, so I don't even begrudge canon that much for not giving it to me anymore.

But the fact is, no ship in OW, as far as I've seen, has remotely as much content, hints and strong ties as McAshe does -- at least, no ships between heroes. We had a cinematic that was CHARGED with significance, with little gestures, with even the smallest facial expressions that carried soooo much more meaning than whole episodes or even seasons in TV shows. And then? We got a novel. A full novel depicting their origins and exploring their dynamics, how tight their friendship was, and how some strong feelings were certainly brewing there, even if neither one was ready to act on them yet (as far as we saw...).

Finally... I'll say I did start working on a Sokkla Western AU ages ago because the idea I had for one was pretty amusing. Then Reunion dropped, and I said "Why would I need to finish that story anymore when the Sokkla Western AU is RIGHT HERE?!"

And that's it, I will stop rambling now because this got insanely long x'D but thank you very very much for giving me this chance to go WILD on everything I can see, within all those canon hints, with these two *-*

#anon #mcashe #the fact that canon is treating me right for once #is blowing my mind and always will #look I can end up crying in a heap when OW2 drops and we find out that nothing I thought of was real #it's entirely possible #... but we already got so much #SOOOOO MUCH #that I can't even say I'd be mad x'D #I am one happy camper on this ship #and I love them to pieces #I wish I had the time/chance to make all the art I've been inspired to about them *cries ten rivers*#one day... one day

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charmed-henry · 3 years

Text

Baby There’s a Shark in the Water | Candenrose feat. Bruce

Date: 5/17/21 Trigger Warnings: references to drowning, blood, head trauma, general violence @thehuntress-rose @i-want-candy @brucewhite

Candace goes for a swim, Bruce goes for a snack, and Henrose goes Baywatch

HENRY

Finally, finally, Henry was going to relax and have a beach day. Things were going surprisingly well. The wedding, introducing Ashleigh to his family, finals, the fae situation, sure, it could be better, but it could be a lot worse. And so, in his favorite swim trunks and sunglasses, Henry was just slathering on some sunscreen when he heard some splashing in the water and the alarm bells started going off in his head again.

No, he was overreacting. He and Eric hadn’t found anything when they went exploring.

Still, he glanced at Rose. “You’d think the lifeguards would do their jobs a little better, right?” he pointed out, trying not to look too worried.

ROSE:

Yes, Rose agreed to hang out at the beach with Henry with the intention to relax. And yes, she knew it wouldn't last long with her particular company. Still, she remained unbothered by the thinly veiled anxiety in Henry’s voice. She took the sunscreen from him and used some on herself. Rose was only concerned with the horrible tan lines she’d get from her high neck bikini top today. No one could fall overboard, so why worry?

“You seem to be pretty good at it, why don’t you do their job then?” Rose suggested in jest, peering over her red sunglasses. “I’m joking. Don’t actually go all BayWatch on me. You need to relax. There are no man eating sharks in the lake.”

She didn’t know how ironic those words would be later that day.

HENRY:

Henry rolled his eyes. “I’m not worried about man-eating sharks. I’m just saying…” Henry trailed off. He didn’t know what he was just saying, to be honest. If he and Eric hadn’t found anything, what was there to worry about here?

He was being paranoid. As usual. He needed to relax and enjoy the day. Henry leaned back on the chair and closed his eyes, pulling the shades back over his eyes.

Nope. The splashing was bothering him. And then, cutting through the regular beach noise, a shriek. Henry sat straight up and threw his sunglasses off. “I’m going over there. Rose, back me up!”

ROSE:

Rose sat up straight. She heard the sharp rising of a scream above all the chatter and waves and splashing too. It was then she realized she was going to eat her words. Man eating shark or not, trouble seemed to follow the people in organizations made to stop it. Immediately she was in work mode. Protect, attack, obey orders.

“Got it!” She pulled her hair back as she stood up, ready to dive into the action. She scanned the shore line for the origin of the shriek. And then another sounded. And another. “There!” she nodded and began to run over, feet kicking up sand and water licking her ankles. “Is that..?”

Candace? Candace and blood? What was going on here?

CANDACE: The weather had decided to warm up on this particular saturday in mid-May. When a few girls from Candace’s major asked if she wanted to go to the lake, she said yes. Not because she particularly liked these girls--they were fine and everything...they just didn’t have a lot in common--but because a day at the lake sounded perfect. Finals were starting soon and Candace really needed a zen day before that happened because she had felt her focus slipping with everything else going on.

So, to the lake she went.

And it was a nice day. The sun was baking down on her and the water was the perfect temperature. Maybe a little cool, but on her floatie, she was perfectly relaxed. Her body was half in the water, arms wrapped around the inflatable tube that her friend was sitting on. With her legs, she was lazily directing them about the lake as they sipped on cold beers that someone had brought in a cooler.

If asked later, Candace would not be able to tell you what she was talking about, but for now, they were all just idly chatting. One of the dumb boys splashed water at them and they retaliated with squeals of playful displeasure.

A lovely, normal day at the lake...

BRUCE

Bruce was going on thirteen days vegetarian. The last time he got hungry, he demolished an entire bag of frozen shrimp alone in his room, like an animal. He stared at it afterward, the ripped plastic remains of the bag reminding him horribly of the carcasses of the live sea creatures the researchers used to bring him in the lab, and vowed that he was done for real this time. The more he practiced, surely, the better he would get at this.

He didn’t get better. He got worse. It started with getting shaky and distracted, then incurably hungry, then a pull toward the water. Then there was a full moon, and Bruce didn’t sleep as well, flashbacks and memories keeping him up at night, and he started fantasizing about fish at all hours. Bruce promised himself he would stay away from the lake during that beach party, but only a few days after, he found himself at the lake.

It was so risky. There were people everywhere. But Bruce wasn’t thinking right, and the next thing he knew, he was in the water, in his merman form, prowling around the bottom of the lake. Not the same as the ocean, not by a mile, but enough to call forth his instincts.

He smelled it from across the lake. A tiny drop of blood. And before Bruce could stop or reason with himself or try any of those tactics he had taught himself, he was zipping across the lake, his instincts taking over. He was hungry. He needed to eat, by any means necessary.

Bruce followed the smell to a pair of girls sitting in inner tubes. One of them had a small papercut, the one with red hair, and without thinking, Bruce sprang out of the water and sank his sharp teeth into the girl’s leg.

CANDACE “Ugh, Greg!” Candace grouched in the direction of the boy who had splashed them, “you made me cut my finger!”

The wound was sharp and bleeding but shallow. She must have sliced it on the seam of the inner tube when she jerked away from the splashing water.

Scowling at the asshole, she dipped her hand in the water, rinsing the cut out.

“Ew, Candace! This water is so gross.”

“It’s not that bad, actually. I’ve seen worse.” Growing up around the Great Lakes meant trips there on family vacations and being around a million gross tourists. Candace was not really an outdoorsy kind of girl, but a little lake water didn’t phase her much.

Candace didn’t think twice about it. To the point where, later, she wouldn’t be able to pinpoint that as the moment she became a target.

It all happened very quickly after that.

At first, all it was was a tug. As if someone had dove beneath them and grabbed her around the waist. Probably Greg because he was an asshole like that.

“Candy,” huffed her friend, who was almost dislodged from her tube. And then, more forcefully: “Oh my god, Candy!” as a bubble of red water burst at her side.

“What?”

The first shriek was not Candace’s. It was her friend’s as Candace was torn off the inner tube and pulled into the water. She gasped as soon as she went under, filling her lungs with lake water. Disoriented, she twisted slightly, but that only made the pain in her leg pronounced. It shot up her thigh and into her hip and her nails instinctively clawed at the dark shape in the water as she screamed.

HENRY: As they jogged over to the shoreline, Henry was about to start bragging about how his intuition never lied and people should really listen to him more when he saw the source of the shouting. Candace. And, launching itself at her, some sort of sea creature?

Henry wished Eric were here, because he would know exactly what to do. Henry hadn’t brought his weapons with him today, but maybe the beach umbrella could work. “Hold on!” Henry shouted, then ran back to where the umbrella and chairs were set up and ripped the umbrella out of the ground, not really caring if he looked ridiculous. He ran back over to the water and brandished the umbrella and its pointy tip. “Get away from her!” Henry warned.

ROSE:

Unfortunately for Rose, she was more of a head first approach kind of gal. She didn’t need a weapon; she was a weapon. The huntress ran forth into the shallows and truly saw the scene for what it was. A grey creature had latched onto Candace’s leg. It was dragging her under. Rose grabbed the redhead in an attempt to keep her head above the water.

Without thinking, Rose kicked it in its side. It wasn’t too hard considering the water slowed her down. She tried to pull Candace away from its teeth, despite the screaming. If she pulled too hard more damage would be done to the damsel. It was on her to get free. Rose could hold off this beast, but only for a few moments.

“Henry! Hurry it up!” She overestimated herself, they needed a weapon.

CANDACE: Time had lost all sense of meaning to Candace.

Her lungs were burning, deprived of oxygen and full of lake water. If she didn’t die of blood loss, she was most definitely gonna die from drowning. In fact, she could even die of a pulmonary enema if she survived this. Or have brain damage. Or organ damage. At the very least, she could develop an infection. She watched too many medical shows, apparently, if this is what she was thinking about before she died.

Because she was pretty sure that was what was going to happen. She was completely unaware that there was anyone trying to rescue her.

When her head surfaced, due to Rose grabbing her under the arm and pulling—Candace didn’t even register that was what was happening. She kept thrashing on instinct, clawing at Rose as if she was an attacker too. Trying to use her to stay afloat above the water as she coughed and gasped for air—dunking Rose under the water instead.

HENRY

If only Eric were here. If only Henry had paid more attention in the lessons about mercreatures. Maybe this was some horrible kind of irony, that he had been so indignant about people valuing his family’s specialty but should have considered others to the same level of threat. He knew there might be creatures in the lake. Why hadn’t Henry been more vigilant?

But there was no time for Henry’s typical cycle of worry and regret and guilt. He had to get into action. Rose was tough and she was a good fighter, but he didn’t want her fighting this thing alone, especially unarmed. Not that an umbrella was much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

“GET AWAY FROM THEM!” Henry cried, letting the terror and rage at seeing two of his closest friends in harm’s way fuel him. The Order always emphasized the importance of being detached from a situation, to focus on the skills and training that would carry you through to victory, but Henry was finding that being emotionally invested was its own kind of weapon.

As Rose tried to pull Candace away from the creature, it tried to lunge again, giving Henry the opening to slam the umbrella against the creature’s head with a sickening thunk. The creature cried out in pain, a high-pitched, strangled kind of cry. For a moment, Henry felt a twinge of guilt, but then he saw Candace thrashing in the water and, his sense of protectiveness renewed, hit the creature again.

ROSE:

Rose yelped and flailed into the water. She kept her grip on the girl but lost her footing. Candace fighting against her was not a part of her improvised plan. Getting dragged under the surface wasn’t either so Rose got a mouthful of lake water. A bitter side of her thought, ‘if I knew this was going to be so much trouble, I would have let her drown…’ But Rose knew her dedication to saving people would always outweigh her self preservation. The thrill she felt hunting, and even now, underwater and at the mercy of magic she didn’t understand… it always outweighed self preservation.

The blonde resurfaced with her charge. Sputtering and spitting out murky liquid, Rose coughed out, “CANDACE. Stop struggling and swim!” Sure, her leg is a bit out of commission, but she had Rose to support her. Candace would be okay. The huntress’ presence guarantees it.

She tried again to pull the girl back to safety. This time the creature no longer latched on and is otherwise occupied with Henry.

BRUCE:

Deep-water merfolk have an evolutionary instinct that snaps them out of a feeding frenzy when things get too dangerous.When they sustain a certain level of injury to the head or to sensitive organs, they go into survival mode, and the need to find food is secondary to the need to find shelter and a place to tend to one’s wounds. At the lab, Bruce’s life got a lot worse when the researchers discovered this fact.

So the blow to the head was almost familiar. By the second one, Bruce dipped below the surface of the water, and that was when the situation revealed itself in full to him. What he had done. He had attacked an innocent girl in the lake, like a monster, and now this boy was trying to kill him with an umbrella. Horrible, creeping guilt took over, but Bruce couldn’t stay around here any longer pondering his actions. He had to make it to safety.

Bruce poked his head above the surface one more time, surveying the sickening scene, confusion and fear showing on his face. But he only had a few seconds before the boy with the umbrella raised the weapon high above his head, and Bruce knew what was coming next. He ducked back under the water and sped off toward the deepest part of the lake, his head ringing with the pain of the hits and the million thoughts he had running through his head.

He couldn’t stay here forever. Bruce knew they would come looking for him. But for now, this felt safe, the darker, cooler water that reminded him of home.

What would the agents say if they found out? Would they give up on him, decide he was a hopeless case and lock him up? Even if not, Bruce knew their confusion and disappointment would be unbearable.

Hating his horrible appetite, Bruce easily captured a few trout and ate them, and then changed back into his human form, leaving the lake on the far side near the forest. He wandered there for a while before he made it back to his apartment, dripping wet and looking dejected.

CANDACE: Candace was not the only one screaming. The lake had just recently opened, which meant that tons of people had flocked to it on their weekend. Just like Candace and her friends had. Just like Rose and Henry had. Everyone was on their way out of the water now, people shouting for help. People shouting about sharks and monsters and all sorts of things. In the distance, there was already the sound of sirens wailing too. The benefits of such a small town meant help was never too far away.

Candace wasn’t paying attention to any of that, though. She was only aware of the pounding of her own heart and the sound of the water as she and the monster struggled.

All of the sudden, it was like a weight had been lifted as the creature let go. In its place, Candace felt the burn of her wounds as they started to bleed. Her panicked splashing only made it worse, but she couldn’t think. There was only blinding terror.

It was Rose shouting her name that finally snapped Candace out of her panic, but only enough to stop her from thrashing. She kicked feebly with her good leg, adrenaline (adrenaline is released by the adrenal glands) still coursing through her body, terrified that whatever had attacked her was still lurking in the murky water, ready for round two.

The next thing she knew, she was being dragged onto land, the sand scraping against her back. She looked down to see the blood as it stained the ground around her and felt her heart rate tick up again. Every movement caused more to pour from the wound.

“What the—“ she started and then leaned over to cough up water. “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

HENRY

The creature swam away. As Rose pulled Candace to shore, Henry tried to chase after it, swinging the umbrella widely, but despite Henry’s attempts at least to render the creature unconscious, it still managed to get away. Another failure. Another loose thread. Henry had saved Candace, but there was still a dangerous sea monster on the loose, and once it tended to its wounds, it would be back and hungry for revenge.

Wait.

Candace.

Henry whipped around to see her lying on the shore, sputtering and shouting as the wound on her leg bled onto the sand. Something tightened in Henry’s chest-- anger, fear, guilt, maybe, that he hadn’t been able to prevent this from happening. And something else, too. The realization that if things had gone differently, Henry might have lost Candace forever, and the last things they might have said to each other would have been those vicious text messages.

That thought was even more terrifying than any sea monster. Through fights and breakups, Candace was still Henry’s friend, and seeing her like this reminded him of that. He couldn’t believe he had wasted so much time refusing to speak to her when something like this could have happened any moment.

Of course, though, there were more pressing things to attend to. Henry splashed out of the water, rushing to Candace’s side. There was already a small crowd gathered. “Everyone, back away!” Henry shouted. “Has someone called 999?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, though. What was more important was that Candace was bleeding. Henry knew from Order training to apply pressure to the wound and try to stop the bleeding. He glanced at Candace, and the look of fear on her face seized him with a fresh wave of panic. One thing at a time. He turned to Rose. “Can you stay with her while I go get something to stop the bleeding?”

ROSE:

As soon as they reached the sand Rose stumbled over the tangle of limbs and tried to wave away the bystanders swarming. Candace was in shock and the crowd only made things worse. It must have been some sight to see some random college students save a girl from a lake monster, but this wasn’t a TV drama. The attention overwhelmed her, Rose was a covert operation kind of huntress. Her heart was racing just as fast as the girl’s who was attacked. She couldn’t face them. So she focused on the task at hand. First aid was second nature to the girl, she’d self administered plenty of times before. The trail of blood leading up to a sputtering Candace was being licked away by the small waves and Rose nodded to Henry only half processing what he said.

“I got her,” the wounds weren’t too deep, but this would hurt. Rose took both of her hands and wrapped them around the bite marks, applying even force. She hoped Candace was too distracted by everything else to really feel it or fight her anymore. “Candace, you’re in shock. You’re only gonna bleed more if you panic. Can you take a slow deep breath for me? Like this.” In and out. Nice and slow. Most of the people Rose had taken care of had been veterans of injuries like this. But this was just a girl, she was probably terrified so she did her best to calm her.

“Henry is getting more help. You’re gonna be okay. Just lay back and breathe slow.” She kept her gaze on Candace, really trying to be a comfort.

CANDACE: Candace was, vaguely, aware she was in shock. There was a part of Candace’s brain that knew what to do. She had had a summer job as a lifeguard at a lake near Dansville. Granted, there wasn’t really protocol for an animal attack (is that what this had been? she wasn’t totally sure.) But, Candace also had a fascination with how the body worked. The different chemicals and functions. And she knew too much blood loss, combined with the chilly water, would lead to hypothermia and shock.

The shock was probably more serious than the hypothermia, but both together was definitely an even bigger problem. It’d be that combo, not the blood loss, that would cause significant damage.And if that didn’t take her out, an infection probably would.

Taking deep breaths wasn’t going to help. Well, it would get oxygen to her organs which would be shutting down soon if nothing changed; but in the long run: deep breaths were gonna do shit and she was probably just going to die.

She couldn’t say any of this, though. Her lips were numb and tinged blue. Her heartbeat was a staccato in her chest: fast, fast, slow. She was nauseous and weak, feeling both faint and dizzy.

Falling back onto her elbows, she flopped onto the ground. Like a fish the shark or...whatever...had probably thought she was. The panic was still making her heart race and her thoughts were jumbled: random scientific facts, interspersed with spikes of worry for her brother and Ferb (were they okay? Were they here? She couldn’t remember), thoughts of her dog, and also: Vanessa is going to make so much fun of me for this.

Her heart rate started slowing and she shivered once or twice. “What happened?” she murmured, not even sure if anyone could hear her over the crowd murmuring and the sound of sirens drawing ever closer.

HENRY There were moments when being trained to handle this specific thing was actually counterproductive. Because Henry’s first thought was that he could grab his shirt, or maybe tear some fabric off of the umbrella if it really came to that, and create a makeshift bandage. And then he spotted the lifeguard on duty, who was already heading in the direction of the scene. Right. Modern medicine. Actual authorities.

Ha. Authorities. Authorities who couldn’t even do the one thing in their job description!

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Henry blurted out. What he had meant to say was that he needed a bandage and something to clean the wound, and maybe some water for Candace to drink, but Henry’s mind flashed again to the image of Candace bleeding on the shore and his face grew hot and red with anger. “You had one job, didn’t you keep everyone safe from god-knows-what in that lake and look what’s happened! That is my friend--” Henry’s throat tightened and he realized he had let his emotions take over far too much.

The lifeguard, a gangly teenager with bad acne and a painful sunburn covering his shoulders, blinked at Henry, looking terrified. It was May-- the lake had just opened-- it was very possible this was his first day on the job. Henry coughed awkwardly. “Er, I mean-- have you got the first aid kit?”

The lifeguard nodded and held up the plastic case.

“What’s your name?” Henry demanded.

“Kevin.”

Henry grabbed his arm and marched him over to the scene. “This is Kevin. He’s got the first aid supplies.” Henry lowered his voice and turned to Rose. “How is she doing?”

ROSE:

Rose heard Candace mumble something, but didn’t have the heart to ask her to repeat herself. “It’s okay, you’re gonna be fine,” she repeated, sounding more like a broken record than a comfort.

Henry was off yelling at some guy who looked like he was in shock too while Rose held steady on the wound. The sirens were getting louder. That’s all she had to focus on, not the foreign bubbling of fear in her chest. Why was she scared? The threat was gone and help was on the way. The waves in the lake died down, but waves of panic built up in Rose. Her hands were the only thing keeping Candace from slipping into unconsciousness… and they weren’t doing a great job.

Her partner arrived back with the ‘lifeguard’, some job he was doing, and Rose looked him up and down. “Do you really think, Kevin, is qualified to use that? She’ll be fine when real help gets here.” She didn’t mean to snap at Henry. But he, of all people, knew how she felt right now.

She was scared.

And then help arrived. A paramedic put a hand on Rose’s shoulder, calmly and cooly moving her away. Still, she held on. “You did a great job. You kids probably saved your friend’s life, but we got it from here. Okay? You can let go now, Miss.”

Another medic came and removed Rose more forcefully and they got to work. She stood away from the scene and stared down at her open palms. Seeing her own hands bloody was nothing new to the huntress, but the slight tremor was.

#i'm so excited about how this turned out :')#baby there's a shark in the water #shark attack #bruce #candace #rose

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braimin · 1 month

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I've mentioned it before but I think when Sanji's inconvenienced or annoyed with something happening between him and Zoro he does this thing where he flails and acts like he's gonna faint like those Victorian girls. Sometimes he gives big Tamaki from ohshc energy if you know what I mean.

Like anytime something he's planned for them goes wrong he has a breakdown and cries about it. Sanji's already always been an overreactive drama queen. But it's worse now, and the crew (Nami) has started calling it his 'Damsel Mode' because every time he acts like that everyone expects Zoro to go save him from his 'turmoil'.

When Sanji and Zoro first get together it really isn't all that bad. It's over the stuff that Zoro is definitely at fault for. Like when he ruins a date by starting fights or getting lost, or when he unintentionally says something really insensitive. But then over time it turns into something a little more unhinged. Like if he doesn't try to protect Sanji's 'honor' when someone insults him. 'Oi, shouldn't you stand up for your man and say something?' 'You're an adult Cook. Do it yourself.' 'Omg Marimo what's the point of keeping a stray if he won't even play guard dog?' 'Don't call me a dog.' Or if someone flirts with him, he'll entertain them for a bit and wait for Zoro to get all jealous, it never works and every time he looks over to find Zoro completely unbothered by it he gets so pissy.

Any time he decides he hasn't received enough attention he goes all 'oh, woe is me, my husband hates me.' But he also won't say to Zoro's face that he wants attention, he just wilts away in his kitchen.

Zoro is pretty good at being able to tell if it's 'Damsel Mode' or if there's actually something up with him. If it is 'Damsel Mode' then he's really sarcastic while he 'comforts' him like 'Yeah yeah, Curls, I'm a terrible husband.' But when it's something serious he'll come to Sanji really quietly and hold him. Zoro's failsafe plan is usually to make food for him (no matter how shitty it turns out) because it almost always makes Sanji feel loved.

#zosan #sanji #zoro #one piece #I just think Sanji should be really dramatic and roll around on the ground more often #Zoro will just stand over him like those parents in grocery stores who just stand there and watch their kid throw a tantrum on the floor #Damsel Mode is different from his pathetic tantrums about girls #and yet very similar lol

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bakatenshii · 4 years

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Enji Todoroki x Ketsl HCs

for my dear wife @enjifuckersupreme, who I reluctantly share with Big Beefy Endeavor.

Ketsl’s small. Teeny tiny Ketsl, standing at 4’11, just shy of 5’0, looks like an easy target for mugging.

So of course she gets mugged. It’s a damsel in distress situation, and we can’t have a damsel in distress without the damsel, in distress.

Except Ketsl’s not really a damsel; because, that implies a weak, helpless young girl. And her source of distress isn’t really the man trying to steal her purse anyway, but rather the big beefy hero who’s steadily making his way to her, one hefty pump at a time. (Pump of his jets! What were you thinking)

The distress being that she’s ready to plant herself face first into those big juicy pecs of his experiencing fanny flutters

What’s a more perfect plot miracle than the Number 1 Hero coming to save the day?

The mugger never stood a chance, really, he’s already whoozy and braindead after a good few slaps from Ketsl. Like I said: not an useless wimpy girl.

(Girls are just like chili peppers, the smaller they are, the more they pack a punch.)

(Literally no one’s ever said that)

So Endeavor’s just making his daily rounds as per, when he hears a scream, some rustling and sounds of a struggle

cue: Number 1 Hero mode switched firmly ON

Some fiery flame jets (for dramatic effect, it’s literally down the road) later, our two protagonists meet

Sort of, ‘meet’

More like Ketsl sees him, drops her purse after she’s just snatched it back from the mugger, and presents him to Endeavor to detain. Almost like a present, how cute.

He might be a lil embarrassed because he’s flamed his way down the road, only to be shown up by a woman that goes up to his knee

But it’s okay!!! Because Ketsl’s playing the “Thank you O’ Number 1 Hero, Sir, may I have the honour of taking you out for coffee to repay your services?”

Except what she actually said was something more like ‘Could I get you a coffee to thank you?’

Number 1 Hero’s brain’s replaying the: All Might’s so popular amongst the youth! No one likes you, you’re just a bitter old man!

So out of spite for All Might and his haters, he says yes. Who’s a bitter old man??

If you’re a long-time subscriber of this channel you know we don’t fuck wit slow burn ‘round here, so we jump straight into:

They end up spending more time together. Why? Because I say so Ketsl works in the area he patrols, and amidst his whole disastrous mess of a family life, it’s nice to have someone as therapeutic and calming to talk to.

Over coffee, of course.

Except it progresses to dinner as well. How? PLOT.

She offers to cook him dinner sometimes, she’s free, anyways, and it’s nice to have company. It’s because she wants to ride his dick into the sun

We’ve all seen enough slice-of-life animes, enough stupid rom-coms, we know how this goes.

They spend stupid amounts of time together, platonically, because vomit-inducing as it is, they appreciate each other’s companies. It’s ‘healing’ as they say.

Brb while I empty my intestines from that tooth-rotting fluff I just put out.

Here have some more poetic fluff:

Practiced conversations vary from ‘What would you like for dinner?’ to ‘You can’t wash your darks with lights, Enji, that’s why all your shirt’s are grey now.’ She ends up doing his laundry anyways, she doesn’t know why he tries.

He does it on purpose. You think Number 1 Hero Endeavor wouldn’t know to separate his darks and lights? No no, we all know his fetish for good little housewives.

It’s so stupidly domestic that we’re all gagging watching it.

While we’re all chanting, hurry up and fuck and get married, these two mature adults are taking their sweet old time enjoying time together. What real mature adults do, you know.

It’s only until one day when Hawks decides to drop by (literally by the window), having heard too much of Endeavor’s boasting about how good he’s been eating. Good little housewife at home, cooking him dinner every night, feeding her man like she should.

Hawks eats about as much as Fatgum, you do the math. He’s a gluttonous bastard.

It’s not until then, when Enji’s reluctant to share his woman his food with Hawks, that he realizes.

Because he’s been standing guard over Ketsl, one gigantic thigh covering the entirety of her form sat at the table, shielding her from Hawk’s hawk-eyes.

And, like, Enji’s thick, but not in the head, no. So it’s a big ‘oh’ moment, and he even lets Hawks stay for dinner as a silent gratitude for helping him realize his feelings.

Enji’s been out of the love game for too damn long, his romancin’ skills are on par with his popularity with the city. Which is to say— in the nicest way— piss poor.

Still, there’s something humiliating endearing when he comes home with a bouquet of roses, stuttering something embarrassingly forward.

He could’ve just said something like ‘I want to come home to you every day’ or whatever, spare us all the disgust, but no, this man’s the definition of a bad dad joke (no pun intended!) so he goes straight in with the ‘If you’re a bird, I’m a bird’

I actually can’t bring myself to write anything this romantic so just make it up in your head, okay, whatever corny, old, too-serious, overly-stoic romantic line, you can come up with, he says that.

That’s not really the point though, the point is Ketsl hears this and takes all 4’11 of herself and clings onto a bicep like a sloth climbing a tree.

Mating press.

That’s the only acceptable position for Big Breeding Boss, Number 1 Hero, Endeavor. Call him Big Daddy or something stupid, he’ll pump you so full of cum you could bottle it up and use it as seasoning.

Apron fetish? Coming home to his good little housewife in just an apron on? Cue the hentai clip.

Anyways, the Todorokis gets a new mum, and we get to profit off of the new hit show, Keeping Up with the Todorokis. Another win-win situation, it’s a running theme here in my hcs.

#Enji Todoroki x Ketsl #Endeavor x Ketsl #matchup hcs #bro i'm actually sorry for this shit #my brain just #big clownfoolery!#Hope you don't want to gauge your eyeballs out after this!!#LOV U WIFE!!#heeeheeeehhh #enjifuckersupreme #crackheads in the psychotic server

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chiseler · 4 years

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VISAGE... VOICE... VITAPHONE

In Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant a destitute waif, betrayed and abandoned by the man who seduced her, sits on a park bench with her newborn infant. Beside her is an old man eating a sandwich. This wordless exchange is one of the greatest moments ever committed to film. Nadia Sibirskaia’s face reveals all of life’s cruel mysteries as she gazes upon a crust of bread.

The persistence of hope is the dark angel that underlies despair, and here it taunts her mercilessly. A whole series of fluctuations of expression and movement in reaction to anguish, physical pain involving hesitation, dignity, ravenous hunger, survival, self-contempt, modesty, boundless gratitude. All articulated with absolute clarity without hitting notes (without touching the keys). Chaplin could have played either the old man on the bench (his mustache is a sensory device!) or Nadia. And it would have been masterful and deeply affecting, but Nadia went beyond virtuosity and beyond naturalism.

She made it actual. And it was more than just a face. Sunlight travels across buildings at every second of the day; and the seasons change the incidence of light, too. Nothing stands still. Even déjà vu doesn’t attempt an exact rendition with the feel of a perfect replay.

***

Another face equates with pain—though a far more luxurious and decadent kind of pain, a visage summoning leftover ancient Roman excess or Florentine backstreets, the contortions of Art Nouveau with its flowers, prismatic walls and perennial themes of ripeness/rottenness, sadomasochism. While various directors have helped mold her naturally unsettling screen presence into nightmare visions, it’s Barbara Steele's vulnerability I tend to remember.

She is open and sensitive even as she materializes in the viewer’s mind as a kabuki demon one moment and a radioactive waxwork the next, a kind of alchemical transformation, an appeal to what Keats called negative capability—one’s ability to appreciate something without wholly understanding it; in fact, one’s ability to appreciate an object for its mystery.

“When did I ever deserve this dark mirror?” Barbara Steele asks me. “Clever you – I feel you’ve just twisted and wrung out an old bible to dry that’s been left somewhere outside lost in timeless years of…” She pauses. “…of rain.”

She made her Italian screen debut as a revenant. And in so doing taught us all the eye is not a camera. It’s a projector.

Barbara Steele’s appearance in 1960’s Black Sunday is, even now, a shock of such febrile sexuality that it forces us to ask ourselves—why do we saddle her with diminishing monikers like “Scream Queen”? And, more fundamentally, why does her force of personality seem to trouble and vex every narrative she touches?

Of course, the answer is partly grounded in Steele’s unique physical equipment—and here I’ll risk repeating a clichéd word about those famous emerald eyes of hers: “Otherworldly.” As if sparked to life by silent-film magician Segundo de Chomón, the supreme master of hand-tinted illusionism. Peculiar even within the context of gothic tales on celluloid for the consumption of Mod audiences, flashing at us from well beyond their allotted time and place in history.

Barbara Steele is one of cinema’s true abominations—a light-repelling force that presents itself in an arrangement of shadows on the screen. No “luminary,”Steele is celluloid anti-matter; a slow burning black flame that devours every filament around it. Steele’s beauty is no accident of nature, even if she is, but in Black Sunday she gives a virtuoso performance by an artist in full command of her talent summoning and banishing it in equal measure in her dual role as mortal damsel in distress and undead predator released from her crypt. Filmmaking is the darkest and unholiest of arts (done right, that is), and for Mario Bava it becomes the invocation of beast and woman from the unconsecrated soil of nightmares. Steele remains the high priestess of the unlit and buried chambers of the imagination; the pure pleasure center of original sin and the murderous impulse buried just below the surface. She reminds us that existence itself is the highest form of betrayal and a continuing curse on us all.

Where Steele’s Italian films are concerned, we are watching silent movies of a sort. “The loss of voice for me has always been devastating…. It’s almost like some karmic debt…” Her sonic presence was eclipsed in a string of crudely, sadly dubbed horror vehicles, yes, including Black Sunday—no doubt aficionados of the great Mario Bava will object to my calling it a “vehicle.” But whenever Steele appears, the storyline falls away. Anachronism rules. Not to mention the director’s exquisite sets, all keyed and subordinated to his ingénue’s stark loveliness (understood in black and white, molded by Italian cameramen into disquieting and sudden plasticity). Like a hot-blooded funerary sculpture made of alabaster, raven hair piled high, Steele’s already imposing height summons schizoid power, satanic sorcery—she’s Eros and Thanatos dynamically balanced. I’ve screened the film many times; and the famous opening sequence invariably leaves my otherwise jaded film students looking traumatized. (Just as a young Martin Scorsese was shattered by it once upon a time.) Barbara Steele’s defiant witch, spewing a final curse upon her mortal judges, pierces to the bone.

While Italian movies robbed Steele of her voice, they liberated her from what it had meant in Britain. Leading ladies in Brit films tended to be well brought-up young things, unless they were lusty and working-class like Diana Dors. Even at Hammer, where sexuality was unleashed regularly via bouts of vampirism, the erotically active roles usually went to continental lovelies (Polish immigrant Ingrid Pitt got her work permit based on Hammer’s claim that no native-born actress could exude such desire and desirability). Steele turns up all-too briefly in Basil Dearden’s Sapphire (1959) as an art school girl, the only kind of role that might allow for both intelligence and a certain liberated attitude. And Steele really was exactly that type. Her appearance is so arresting, you want the movie to simply abandon its plot and follow her into some fresh storyline: it wouldn’t really matter what.

In Italy, Steele suddenly became class-less and nation-less, devoid of associations beyond those conjured by the chiseled cheekbones and enormous eyes (convincingly replaced with poached eggs by Bava for a special effects shot). Her inescapable exoticism didn’t make sense in her native land, but that bone structure could suggest Latin, Slavic, or anything else. Omninational, omnisexual, but definitely carnivorous.

Generally remote with his actors, who were nothing more than compositional elements to him, Bava’s capricious move of selecting his female lead from a magazine photo-spread looks almost prescient in hindsight. Was it luck? Or, perhaps her now legendary eyes suggested a bizarre and beautiful leitmotif… to be destroyed, resurrected, and played endlessly on a register of emotions—extreme emotions, that is, tabooed delights.

Steele shares an anecdote about her director’s temperament and working methods on Black Sunday… “Everything was so meticulously planned that Bava rarely asked me for multiple takes. There was no sense of urgency or drama, which was rare for an Italian director…” I’m suddenly detecting deep ambivalence as she vacillates between little jabs at Bava (“He was a Jesuit priest on the set, somewhere far away”) and gratitude. “There was a tremendous feeling of respect, whereas in my earliest roles at Rank I always felt shoved around, practically negated by the pressure of production.

“Bava did go absolutely berserk once,” she goes on. “John Richardson, this gorgeous, sinewy creature, for some reason couldn’t carry me across the room. And I was like eleven pounds in those days. We had to do it over and over, twenty times or something, and whenever John stumbled or dropped me, the whole crew would be in hysterics. We were all howling with laughter, except for Bava – he went simply wild! Eventually, some poor grip had to get down on all fours, and I rode on his back in a chair with John pretending to carry me.”

If Black Sunday is a summation of spiritual and physical dread, it’s because Steele is everyone in this dream-bauble, everyone and everywhere, an all-consuming autumnal atmosphere. Which, of course, provides Mario Bava with something truly rare—a face and mien as unsettling as horror films always claim to be and almost never are. The devastation she leaves behind, her anarchic displacement, which has nothing to do with conventional notions of performance or “good acting,” is hard to describe. And here Bava earns his label of genius through compositional meaning—amid the groundswells of fog, lifeless trees and gloomy dungeons, Steele is an absence impossibly concretized in penumbras and voids. She is a force of nature never to be repeated.

Nightmare Castle (1965) starts off in Lady Chatterley mode as Steele cheats on her mad scientist husband (“At this rate you’ll wipe out every frog in the entire county,” is an opening line less pithy but more arresting than “Rosebud”) with the horny handyman. She’s soon murdered on an electrified bed, hubby preserving her heart for unexplained reasons while using her blood to rejuvenate his mistress. Then he marries her insipid blonde half sister (Steele again in a blonde wig) and tries to drive her mad. So we now have Gaslight merged with Poe and every revenge-from-the-grave story ever.

The identical twin half-sisters (?) bifurcate further: blonde Barbara goes schizoid, possessed it seems by her departed semi-sibling. Dark Barbara comes back as a very corporeal revenant, hair occluding one profile, like Phil Oakey of the Human League. Tossing the locks aside, she reveals… the horror!

Almost indescribable in terms of plot, character or dialogue, the film looks stunning, as chiaroscuro as Steele’s coal-black hair and snow-white skin. Apparently the product of monkey-typewriter improvisation, the story serves as a kind of post-modern dream-jumble of every Gothic narrative ever. You might get a story like this if you showed all of Steele’s horrors to a pissed-up grade-schooler and then asked them to describe the film they just saw. As a result, the movie really takes what Dario Argento likes to call the “non-Cartesian” qualities of Italian horror to the next dank, stone-buttressed level.

When I first met Barbara Steele about ten years ago, we somehow found ourselves sitting in front of a Brancusi sculpture here in New York City—I remember a filmmaker acquaintance joking afterwards: “Steele beats bronze!” Indeed, at 66 she was still stunningly beautiful, flirtatious, frighteningly aware of the power of her stare.

She was a painter in her youth, so it’s not surprising that, even as I visualize her in a voluptuous, cinematic world of castles and blighted landscapes, her own self-image is perennially absorbed by art—in the sense of André Malraux’s Museum Without Walls. She asks me to show her my paintings and when I dodge the subject out of shyness she offers:

A friend of mine just had a show of his art in a little cinema here – very small paintings, about 8 inches by 6 – and then they projected them onto one of their screens and they looked fantastic! Size is everything! Unless you were born in the Renaissance… then you were surrounded by silence and stone walls, shadows and glimmers of gold, and faces that are like spells they look so informed.

Steele speaks of her “old, suspicious Celtic soul,” her bitterness at having “flitted through movies par hazard,” and a newfound desire to make audio books (what colossal revenge!). It’s poetic really, this doppelganger, a ghost-like screen persona following her around. Whenever I think of the effect her movies have had on me, the following words by Charles Lamb leap to mind.

Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras – dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies – may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition – but they were there before. They are transcripts, types – the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to effect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body – or without the body, they would have been the same… That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual – that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy – are difficulties the solution of which may afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.

Even the wooliest metaphysics can be hard to separate from actual violence. Case in point: the night of September 22, 1796. Charles Lamb had his own brush with horror, when the future poet and author of children’s stories found himself removing a bloody knife from his sister’s hand. A spasm of matricidal rage that would land her in a mad house—and tending to prove, once again, the need for genres of terror and trepidation. For a moment at least, Steele seems to agree, bowled over by the Lamb anecdote, literally screaming: “AND THAT NAME – LAMB – IT MAKES YOU THINK OF SUCH INNOCENT BRITISH LANDSCAPES!” She’s a fairly solitary and introspective person on the one hand, capable of intense and unexpected eruptions of joy on the other, which may be why Italians have always embraced her—a shared gloomy zest for life, fatalism and pasta. There’s something intensely porous about her (as porous as film itself), which helps clarify her otherwise inscrutable tension with that shadow-self up on the screen, the one she so busily downgrades.

***

The thirties bustled with wise-cracking, fast-talking dames, probably not for any proto-feminist reason, but simply because the writers had a surplus of sassy talk to dispense onto the screen, and audiences liked looking at legs, so why not combine the two? Amid all the petite peroxide pretties, a few acerbic character actresses were allowed room, perhaps to make the cuties bloom all the more radiantly against them. Whatever the aesthetic logic, we can be grateful for it, since it gave us Ruth Donnelly and Winnie Lightner and Jean Dixon and a few other unforgettable shrews and wiseacres, adept as stage mothers, streetwise best pals of the leading lady, etc.

Aline MacMahon sort of fits into this category, but also destroys any category she sees with her laser vision. In Gold Diggers of 1933, she’s a Fanny Bryce type comedy showgirl, and in Heat Lightning (1934) she’s an ex-moll running a garage. In between, she played world-weary secretaries and put-upon mothers, taking any role and stealing the movie along with it. Rather than resist classification, she goes on the offensive, smashing down stereotypes and insisting on her own peculiar individuality.

Big and rangy in the body and hands, she had a strange, sculpted beauty, and was as luminous as Dietrich. Maybe more so: cameramen hit Marlene with brighter lights to make her shine out, whereas Aline was typically in the lead’s shadow. Her complexion is like the glass of milk in Suspicion in which Hitchcock planted a light bulb. That white. A sheet of paper passing before her face would appear as a dark eclipsing rectangle.

The law of photogenics insists that actresses hired to play the non-glamorous roles must be staggeringly lovely, but off-kilter and unconventional enough to fool the audience into thinking they’re seeing failed beauty. Aline’s unlikely photofit of attractive features resulted in a caricature of elegance and earthiness in precisely the wrong proportions, which makes her fascinating and alluring to watch.

The eyes are seriously big, saucers hooded by the heaviest lids since Karloff’s monster, resulting in long slits which strive to echo the even wider mouth, a perfectly straight line seemingly intent on decapitation. Like a horizon with lips. The chin cleft below catches the viewer by surprise. Were chin clefts on women more common then, or did studios screen in favor of them? The cheekbones have a graceful, yet powerful curve, so the face as a whole combines the qualities of an ice-cream baby and a crystal skull. All wrong, and alright with me.

Aline’s humor about her ill-assorted collection of perfect features was often played on in dialogue, so it’s pleasing when a role like the one in Heat Lightning admits that, for all her unlikeliness, she was indeed beautiful. More than a pretty face, too: her way with a snappy rejoinder distinguished her even in an era of exceptional wit and quicksilver delivery. And her essence, which radiated out whatever the role, was that of a philosophical, warm, smart, funny, sad woman: the essence of the age.

By Daniel Riccuito and David Cairns

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vagrantblvrd · 5 years

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Touch of Gray (1/1)

Summary: Its probably not a good sign that Michael’s gotten used to being approached by people in parking garages.

Notes: Prompt fill for Anon who asked for Crinkle Dot with Michael getting kidnapped (again) based on a line from Small Hours of the Night.:

Today it was Trevor, but they all know there will be a day when Michael’s on his own when someone decides they want to hurt the big bad Vagabond where it’ll do the most damage.

(Read on AO3)

Its probably not a good sign that Michael’s gotten used to being approached by people in parking garages.

Just.

An in general sort of thing, because he lives in Los Santos and all kinds of fuckery goes on in places like that. Especially this late at night, and okay, okay, okay, maybe Ryan’s right about Michael being a dumbass.

Because he hears the guy walking up to him, hears him stop a few feet away. Hard-soled shoes clip-clopping on the hard cement like that, of course he does.

But because he’s Michael and coming off working a double shift, he doesn’t pay all that much attention to it. (He does, just not the right kind. Preoccupied with this he needs to do because he has a date later, so you know.)

Hears the guy clear his throat, something aggressive to it that pings Michael's radar too late, but it’s really the part that follows after that makes him realize he should have been more alert.

The whole, “Hey, pal,” and “You Michael Jones?” and “Rudy sends his regards,” which.

First of all, Michael has no goddamn clue who the hell Rudy is, so there’s that.

Second of all, talk about being dramatic as hell, and also a great way to preface sucker punching someone when they turn around to ask you what the fuck you want.

No matter how many times Ryan or the others drag him down to the gym to teach him how to defend himself, he won’t be fast enough to react when someone blindsides him like that. A for effort on their parts and all that shit, but Michael's only human and there’s that whole dumbass thing too, so.

Yeah.

Michael sees a meaty fist coming straight at him before pain explodes in his face and he drops like a ragdoll.

========

He wakes up who knows how many hours later tied up like a damsel in distress in those movies his mom denies she watches. All melodrama and other movie clichés as far as the eye could see.

Big Vinewood hero, dashing and brave and his spunky sidekick. Gorgeous love interest who was all fired up with determination to stand toe-to-toe with every asshole she came across until it came time for the villain to get one over on the hero, and then everything fell apart.

“Guilty pleasures,”she’d tell him, embarrassed as hell and only half serious with her threats. “If I find out you’re telling people I watch them you’re grounded, you little shit.”

Mich looks around, tries to figure out where he’s been taken this time.

“Look at me now, ma,” he mutters, “just like your movies.”

He’s in a bland little room that’s gone neglected for who knows how long. Peeling paint and the smell of mildew and wood rot. Water stains in the ceiling and garbage and whatever else piled in the corners. Old furniture like you’d find in a typical office building that’s a few years out of date and seen some hard times.

Nothing new there, nothing to give away a particular area in Los Santos.

The train whistle he hears in the distance is a little more helpful, but doesn’t help him pin the place down.

So, yeah.

Not great.

His head hurts like hell and he can feel dried blood flaking away under his node, down his lips and chin. His nose doesn’t feel broken, which is always nice.

Aside from a few aches and pains nothing else does either.

Whoever sucker punched him in the garage isn’t around to ask questions, and there’s no sign of anyone else.

Either they’re went to the trouble of grabbing him just to let him rot here where no one’s supposed to find him, or they’re letting him stew.

“No one has any goddamned imagination with this shit,” Michael says, annoyance rising because fucking seriously.

He’s been grabbed a few times before this. Assholes who think he’ll roll over for them, hand them everything they want in exchange for letting him go like that’s what they have planned.

Like he’s just that stupid.

Sure, he’s not thrilled about the part that comes after being grabbed, the whole tough guy act these kind of assholes put on.

Smile at him like it’s just business kid, you know how it is, right? And then the ugly shit starts, a punch here, another one there. Things to soften him up and get him talking, babbling for them to stop, he’ll talk, he’ll talk, only Michael doesn’t play along.

Doesn’t follow the script like they expect him to.

So they bring out their shiny little knives and flashy guns. Get in his face and ask him if he’s sure he wants to keep the Fake AH Crew’s secrets. Doesn’t he know he’s just another tool to them? Convenient little asset and all that, but c’mon kid, you’re smarter than that, aren’t you?

All that fancy education to get where you are in life, and you’re gonna throw it away on scumbags like them?

He’s heard variations on that since the wrong people found out about him from an ally of the Fakes with loose lips and no goddamn common sense to speak of. Idiot kid who should have known better, but you know. Idiot kid.

Last Michael heard, he’s off somewhere the Roosters can keep an eye on him. Far away from Ryan and the others who hold grudges like nobody’s business. (Got this sideways look from Geoff and Burnie who was visiting at the time. Both of them probably thinking Michael’s a bigger idiot than expected, but whatever. The crew’s always telling him they owe him, and it was a small enough favor.)

Got a broken nose out of it before Michael managed to get everyone calmed down. Drew attention to the fact he was kind of bleeding a little, and oh, hey, anyone want to return the favor of stitching him back together for fuck’s sake, or did he have to do it himself?

(He kind of did, though. Ryan all wound up and freaked out as Michael told him what to do like the big doof hadn’t been - badly – stitching himself back together for years.)

Michael sighs because he hates this part. Boring as fuck and wasting his time.

“Goddammit,” Michael sighs, because Ryan’s going to be a goddamn pain about this.

(Michael’s got a thing about being punctual, and the fact he’s late for their date will be a source of grief for him.)

========

It takes a couple of hours before this Rudy asshole shows his face.

Beanpole of a guy with beady little eyes and something about him that makes Michael think about snakes. (Might be the way he puts emphasis on his sibilants, the way Jeremy does sometimes when he’s fucking around in a death match back at the penthouse.)

Ridiculously into his bad guy cliches from the way he circles around Michael to clasping his hands behind his back once he’s standing in front of Michael.

Pair of enforcers flanking the door because assholes like him can’t not with the intimidation tactics.

“So,” he says – hisses? - giving Michael a once-over. “You’re this Michael Jones I’ve heard so much about.”

Michael doesn’t know what the fuck is going on here, but sure.

Why not.

“I mean,” Michael says, because he’s an idiot and hanging around the Fakes has just brought that out in him even more. “It’s a pretty common name when you think about it.”

Might as well cal himself John Smith, the amount of people who go around with the same name.

Rudy’s one of those people who doesn’t seem to find that amusing, and Michael knows it’s going to be a long night because he goes straight into douchebag mode.

Raises his hand like an asshole and snaps his fingers, eyes on Michael the whole time as one of the bruisers leaves his station by the door and steps forward. (Cracks his knuckles like you see in the movies, all intimidation factor and unbelievably assholish.)

Rudy smiles, mean edge to it.

“I get it now,” he says, turning to leave. “You’re just like them.”

Michael rolls his eyes because no, he’s really not.

Well.

He didn’t used to be anyway. Had common sense they didn’t, but the fuckers have been chipping away at that until he ends up in situations like this and making all the wrong choices.

He looks to the bruiser who’s looking at Michael with his head cocked like he can see all his weak points.

“Can we just get this over with?” Michael asks. “Places to be and all that.”

The bruiser smirks like a man who loves his job and yeah, yeah.

Long goddamned night ahead of him.

========

When the bruiser’s done with their first session, Michael’s nose is broken and he’s has a loose tooth. Maybe more than one, it’s hard to keep track.

He hurts like fuck and there’s this leaky pipe at the back of the room that’s driving him nuts.

Rudy’s staring him down, this bland little smile on his face.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know,” he says. Just a businessman looking out for his own interests, nothing personal to any of this. “Tell me what I want to know, and we’ll send you on your way.”

Michael stares at him because it’s the usual load of horseshit guys like him peddle. Empty promises with threats of violence behind them and honestly?

Michael’s tired of it.

“Alright,” he says, licks blood off his lips, cracks his neck because he has to look up at the asshole ad his bruisers and it’s putting a crick in his neck. “You want me to talk? I’ll talk.”

He has a lot of grievances against the Fake AH Crew with all the shit they put him through on a regular basis. Just one thing after another with those assholes.

Michael starts out with something that’s been bugging him for a long goddamn time.

“Who the fuck decides to call themselves Rimmy Tim? Like fucking really. Did the asshole just have a bunch of kids write-in suggestions he picked out of a hat or something?”

Speaking of.

“What the fuck is up with the cowboy hat?”

The color scheme, okay, yeah. Michael gets that because Jeremy’s a disaster, so why not pick the worst color combination he could, but the cowboy hat?

Michael bites back a laugh at the way Rudy’s expression goes from smug satisfaction to something approaching apoplectic rage. Tiny bit of disbelief, like most people in Michael’s situation aren’t this stupid.

Asshole uncoils, sneer on his face like this isn’t something he usually does himself but he’ll make an exception for Michael.

Backhands him, heavy rings on his fingers leaving a cut behind, blood spilling down Michael’s cheek as his head snaps to the side.

“You might want to rethink your position, Jones,” he says, sharp and clear, no extra emphasis on the sibilants this time.

Michael shakes his head, and looks back at good old Rudy. Sees the anger in his eyes, blood he’s shaking off his hand.

“Yeah?” Michael asks. Cocks his head as he hears noise outside the room they’ve got him in. Sounds a little like unexpected trouble coming Rudy’s way, what with the yelling. Sees Rudy straighten up, head turning towards the noise as it draws closer. “I could say the same for you, asshole.”

Rudy snarls, mouth opening to snap out orders to his bruisers but it’s too little too late as someone kicks the door open.

Smoke rushing in and sight of fire behind the figure in the doorway.

Dramatic bastard in his leather jacket and ridiculous mask.

Also, you know.

Mini-gun.

Rudy takes a step back, closer to Michael, and the Vagabond aims the mini-gun at him.

Just that.

Aims that monster of a gun at Rudy and lets him think things over. No rush, the Vagabond’s got plenty of time now that he’s here. Wouldn’t want to pressure Rudy or anything like that.

There’s this moment where Rudy glances over at Michael like he’s weighing the odds of him getting close enough to use Michael as a bargaining chip – but he’s one of the smarter ones. Gives up that line of thinking as he raises his hands and turns back to face the Vagabond.

The bruisers follow his lead, hands in the air as a familiar figure ducks around the Vagabond and plucks the guns out of the bruiser’s shoulder holsters. Ejects the magazines and tosses them in a corner of the room. Goes on to pat them down for any hidden weapons that end up in in the same corner, but he pockets their wallets with a little smirk.

Moves over to Rudy who is visibly seething, and flashes him this bright little grin. Pats his cheek before giving him the same treatment. (Shoots Michael a look, eyes narrowing as he spots the cut on Michael’s cheek and slips Rudy’s rings off his fingers.)

Rudy and his bruisers are glaring at Gavin, but Michael’s attention is on the Vagabond standing so very, very still, mini-gun humming away.

“Well, don’t you look a sight,” Gavin murmurs, hand on Michael’s shoulder as he slips around behind him to cut through the ropes tying him to the chair.

Rough stuff, Michael’s wrists rubbed raw from trying to get out of them earlier with no luck.

Michael snorts, lets Gavin help him to his feet. Hand on his elbow as he leads him towards the door. Michael digs his heels in when they draw even with the Vagabond. (Asshole doesn’t acknowledge them, focus on Rudy and his bruisers.)

“I’m okay,” Michael says, just loud enough for the idiot. “I’m fine.”

Little bit battered, bruised, but nothing he won’t heal from.

“Michael,” Gavin says, tugging on his elbow.

Michael sighs and lets Gavin escort him out of the building.

They pass by Jeremy and members of B-Team along the way having what looks like a pointed discussion with the handful of Rudy’s people still standing. (Offering them a choice.)

Michael pulls back against Gavin’s hold when he hears the first gunshots, scowls when the assholes tightens it for a moment before his hand drops away.

Gavin sighs.

“It’s not just about you,” he says quietly. “If bastards like him think they can get away with something like this, it’ll mean trouble for the crew.”

Michael knows that.

Knew that when he considered the risks involved in pursuing a relationship with Ryan. Sat down and thought about it, news on in the background and all the shit he saw on the job. Thought about everything he’d heard about the Fake AH Crew after moving to Los Santos, the shit they got up to. (Enemies they’d made and the ones they’ll make because they’re all idiots.)

Some days all that knowing hits harder than others, has a more direct impact.

“Come on,” Gavin says, walking ahead. “Let’s get you back to the penthouse where we can get you taken care of.”

========

The Vagabond shows up at the penthouse about an hour later.

Knocks on the door to Ryan’s suite and doesn’t let himself in afterwards, so Michael has to open it for him.

He’s still wearing the mask, but something about the way he’s standing makes it seem less like an intimidation tactic and more like something to hide behind. (Or maybe Michael’s full of bullshit.)

“Hey,” Michael says, stepping back to let him in.

He gets a grunt by way of greeting and a whiff of smoke as the Vagabond walks past. (Burning building with a touch of cigarette smoke tossed in.)

Watches the asshole look around like he’s expecting trouble, and sighs. (Long night for everyone.)

“I could use some help,” he says, brushes his fingers under the cut on his face. “Can’t get the fucking things on right.”

Always easier to for him when he’s treating someone else than himself and all that.

Michael had help resetting his nose because that’s always a bitch to do yourself, but insisted he could handle the rest. Minor stuff, just needed to clean up and slap a few band-aids on and call it a day.

No going back to his own place until the Fakes decide it’s safe, and this is as good as anywhere they’d let him go off after tonight. (Ryan’s place would have been a nice second-best, but he knows they want to keep him close until they shake off the what could have beens.)

Took the time to grab a quick shower, change out of his uniform and into a spare set of clothes he keeps here. Was just trying to decide where to start when he heard the knock at the door.

The Vagabond stares at him like he’s having trouble understanding him, so Michael walks over. Gives him this look, and cocks his head.

“You going to take that thing off?” he asks, and waits to see if the Vagabond’s done for the night or if he’s going to be sticking around for a while yet.

Hard to tell with him sometimes, you know? Guy’s got a lot of shit packed away in that head of his and this thing with Michael just adds to it some days. (Ones like this.)

The Vagabond keeps staring at him and Michael shrugs. Goes back to the bathroom to path himself up and breathes easier when he hears a tired sigh behind him. (Squeak of leather and this quiet noise of something landing on the coffee table.)

He’s sorting through Ryan’s first-aide kit when he hears shuffling footsteps, looks up to see another reflection in the mirror over his shoulder.

No face paint tonight, like he couldn’t be bothered with it. (Intricate design like that? Takes time to get it right.)

“You’re running low on a few things,” Michael says, which is ridiculous.

The Fakes have all that shit tucked away on one of the lower floors and Trevor making sure they stay stocked up because God knows they need it, the trouble they get into all the damn time.

There’s a little stare down until the idiot standing behind him sighs again, shaky little thing.

“I’m alright,” Michael says, because he is.

Going to hurt for a while maybe, but it could have been worse. (Might be, someday with his luck, but he’s going to think about that right now with the way the idiot’s looking at him.)

“You look like shit,” and it’s not so much the Vagabond telling Michael that as it’s someone closer to being Ryan.

Not quite there yet, but he’s losing that hard look in his eyes. The tension(guilt) he’s carrying around on his shoulders like it’s something that’s gonna bring him low one of these days.

“Yeah, well,” Michael says, and shrugs. “Shitty genetics.”

Another sigh with all this exasperation to it, and there Ryan is. Buried under a shitload of issues and misplaced guilt, regret, who even knows anymore.

“Michael - “

Michael's real stupid these days. Somehow got into a relationship with an idiot in the weirdest fucking way, got all tangled up with the group of misfits he calls a crew. (Sounds more like family when he says it though, has all those complicated feelings behind it.)

Forgets to be smart about things sometimes, and it gets him in trouble all over the place.

“Doesn’t look like it’ll leave a scar,” Michael says, studying his reflection. “Kind of sucks, guy at work keeps telling me chicks dig ‘em.”

The cut’s not that deep, more of a scratch. Looked worse than it is, all that blood and the general situation. All it needs is a butterfly band-aid or two and it’ll heal just fine.

Looking up at the idiot’s reflection, he can’t help but smile a little at the way his eyes narrow just the tiniest bit. (Knows Michael’s fucking with him and trying not to take the bait.)

Michael’s also more of an asshole these days. Must be the company he’s keeping.

“Is that so,” Michael hears, bit of strain to it.

Too soon, maybe, to be making light of things, but what else is he supposed to do with an idiot who insists on blaming himself for every shitty thing to happen to Michael like he’s got sole rights to it.

Michael’s the one who fucked up, let his guard down. Ryan’s just...fuck, who knows.

Maybe it is his fault people are looking at Michael like he’s an easy target, way to get at the Fakes. Maybe it would have happened anyway after Michael landed himself in Phil’s old spot looking after these assholes. Maybe things could have gone another way and Michael would have gotten suckered into helping some other bastard bleeding all over his stuff who’d leave Michael to fend for himself when trouble came calling.

Ryan’s going to want to talk about it, like he think he’s making a logical point about Michael being safer if he had nothing to do with the crew. (With him.)

Worried about the shit he puts Michael through. Shit he’s forced to deal with, know about, because it’s not like Ryan and the others hold down normal jobs. No ignoring what they do. Things they’ve done and things they’ll do. (Forgets no one has clean hands here in Los Santos, though.)

And then, because Michael's not a moron, he’ll to tell Ryan to go fuck himself if he thinks that’s the right answer to things in any world. Cat’s out of the bag on that one anyway, and even if he agreed with Ryan, went along with that stupidity, it wouldn’t magically fix things.

Assholes like Rudy would still target Michael because they’d know he’s still a link to the crew. Someone to be used against them still and making Ryan and Michael miserable for no goddamned reason. (They’ve been over this before, and yet.)

It’s late though, and they’ve had a long, shitty day. Michael would rather save the arguing for later, when he has the energy to tell Ryan all the ways he’s wrong and hopefully – maybe – have some of it stick in that thick skull of his.

So.

Michael shrugs and picks up one of the butterfly bandages, waves it at the idiot behind him who sighs again before taking it.

Small steps with this one, but worth it.

========

“What are we doing right now?”

Kind of a dumb question because there’s a really terrible movie playing on the television. Awful special effects with some poor bastard in a rubber monster suit terrorizing college co-eds.

Empty takeout containers on the coffee table and a bowl of popcorn and drinks for the two of them.

Comfortable couch and Ryan a decent stand-in for a pillow. (Ryan’s still a little shaky, mindset taking time to tick over, but Michael’s working on it.)

“Well,” Michael says, feeling comfortably fuzzy. “I kind of had a date tonight.”

Not quite dinner and a movie level thing because they’re boring as fuck when it comes to this shit, but he was promised enchiladas and that’s got to mean something.

“But then a thing came up,” Michael says, still running his mouth. “And I missed it.”

Ryan makes this little noise in the back of his throat, hums to himself. (Knows better than to bring up his stupid argument tonight because Michael’s not having it.)

“And then,” Michael goes on, rambling like an idiot. “I remembered you love to bitch about the science in these movies, so I figured it would be better than an IOU or something.”

Michael may be more than a little comfortably fuzzy, but what the hell right?

Ryan’s making this other noise now, body shaking with it. Michael’s no expert, be he’s thinking the asshole’s laughing at him.

Quiet little wheezing thing, with IOU mixed in, along with what the hell does that even mean? and Jesus Christ.

It. Yeah. Fuck if Michael knows.

“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses as the scene on the television switches to what’s supposed to be a high-tech lab for a corrupt corporation hoping to sell their abomination to the military for a shit-ton of money. All shiny and white and cliché as hell. “We’re getting to the first exposition dump.”

Ryan wheezes one last time before he quiets down, and Michael grins to himself as he feels the idiot getting more and more indignant about the blatant science bullshit the actors are spewing.

“Oh my God,” Ryan bursts out, sounding more himself than he has all night. “I don’t - No. That’s not how that works!”

Michael shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth and smiles to himself because yes, okay. Terrible movies and bad science isn’t quite the way to Ryan’s heart, but damn if it doesn’t piss him off enough to forget to be an idiot for a bit.

“I don’t know,” Michael says. “Makes sense to me.”

Why not splice animal DNA together in ways that wouldn’t work in the real world to create the perfect killing machine? What could possibly go wrong?

Ryan’s glaring at him, has to be, because Michael loves to do this to him. Make him watch the worst movies and go along with the terrible science just to annoy the fuck out of him.

It’s not the way he thought their night would go, but given the kind of city Los Santos is and their luck in general it’s a hell of a lot better than he expected and far more entertaining to boot.

==================================

Where the Heart Is

#myan #ragehappy #fake au #Crinkle Dot #implied/referenced torture #vagrant fic #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#(still working on prompts guys #just #like #real slow #:D?)

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ironspiidey · 4 years

Text

Superhero’s Get Bullied too

Chapter: 1

Chapter 4: Harley Stark and House Arrest (Tony Stark Style)

Read on A03

Harley storms into his room and flops down onto his bed “Fuck sake!” he punches one of the pillows. He goes to grab his phone and text Tommy but realizes it’s still on the table in the kitchen.

“Hey Friday?”

“Yes Harley?” the Ai responds

“Is Tony and Peter still in the kitchen?”

“Yes they are, do you need me to alert Master Stark?”

“No no, I just left my phone out there. How mad is he Fri?”

“Based on his heart rate and level of speaking. I think it’s safe to say he’s mildly annoyed right now.”

Harley sighed in relief, knowing how moody his uncle could get. “Okay thanks Friday, that’s all I need.” He got up off his bed and lightly pushed his door open, listening to see what they were talking about. He couldn’t quite catch their words but the blonde could tell they weren’t fighting so he slowly made his way out into the hallway.

“Tony this isn’t a big deal. I told you the gist of what happened so why isn’t that enough?” Peter sighed.

“How many times do I have to tell you before I get through that beautiful thick skull of yours? You are my world Peter Parker and if someone yells at you or hurts you emotionally or physically I want to know because you deserve the world and I will not stand by and let anyone badger you. “

Harley smiles softly as he came into viewing and hearing distance of the kitchen. His uncle was mostly a cold man and it had been since he was a young boy that he had heard the older man’s tone so soft. Harley stopped short of the kitchen so they could have their moment.

“Tony I’m not some damsel in distress, I did just fine before you. I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”

Harley shook his head. At least until Peter ruined the moment with his stubbornness. Peter really was meant for his uncle.

“Nor am I claiming you of those things.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“Your mine Petey, and I’m starting to think it’s time the world knows it.”

Both Harley and Peter gasp at Tony’s words. Peter and Tony have been together for the best part of a year but to save the press from tearing them apart the decision had been made to keep things low key until Peter and Harley were done at Midtown High in the spring.

“Tones…”

Harley used this opportunity to quietly walk behind them to the kitchen table, not sneaking as he didn’t feel like fighting with his uncle anymore but also not wanting to disturb the couple either.

“I’m serious Peter, you get walked over way too much and I’m done standing by--- Oh hello nephew. Decided to join us with your presence again?”

Harley shakes his head and lifts his phone up once he reaches the table “No, just wanted my cell.”

Tony’s eyes narrow “to do what exactly?”

“Text Tommy and tell him I’m not going back out tonight.”

“Really? That easy eh? You’re not going to attempt to sneak out or have him here?”

Peter sighs “Tony give him a break.”

Both Harley and Tony look at the other teen in shock. Peter never says anything or sticks up for Harley while Tony and him are arguing, knowing how heated they can get. Maybe Flash did hit him on the head and give him a concussion.

“I’m sorry what?” Tony asks with a raised eyebrow

“Well think about it Tones. When we first became a thing, you purposely had a talk with Harley and made him understand that we were staying a secret but that he was to always keep an eye on me regardless of the situation. That he needed to protect me. So you really have zero right to freak out at him for trying to deal with my bully before you pulverize him. ”

Tony looked at the brunette with love in his eyes. How is it that this young boy can be afraid of speaking up to a teacher or student about some silly or simple but when most people would be afraid to question Tony Stark, he goes all in. “Oh Petey, you amaze me every day?” Tony leans ahead and kisses his forehead

Peter leans to the touch then turns to the other teen “Now don’t for one second think I want you doing that shit Harley. I’m able to take care of myself.”

Harley scoffs and glances down at his arm “Yea you’ve done a great job so far Parker.” Then the blonde disappears down the hall into his room.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Stark men and their attitudes I swear to god.”

Tony chuckles and wraps his arm around Peter “As long as Thor or his kin aren’t the god you’re praying to, I don’t care.”

“It’s an expression old man. Sometimes you really are a Boomer.”

Tony gasps in mock hurt, pressing his hand to his heart. “You wound me my precious millennial.”

“I think somehow you’ll survive.” Peter presses a soft kiss to Tony’s nose

“I know what would make me feel better.”

Peter raises an eyebrow “oh and what would that be?”

Tony smiles and whispers in his ear “Tell Daddy what happened with the bad bully at school”

Peter scoffs and pushes Tony away “Oh my god! You’re actually terrible you know that?”

Tony laughs wholeheartedly. “What? It would you know?”

“Yea but bringing my Daddy kink into this isn’t fair!”

“Oh baby don’t be ashamed. Daddy just wants to help.”

Peter shivers, damn tony and knowing how affected he can get when he goes into ‘Daddy’ mode. “Tony!”

“Baby please?” Tony gives him his best puppy dog eyes.

“Damn you Tony Stark.” Peter says sighing in defeat. “Fine you win. You win but we have to make a deal.”

Tony smirks knowing his Peter all too well. That the boy could never say no when Tony spoke like that. “And what would that be?”

“You don’t do or say anything to him directly or indirectly until tomorrow. “

“Indirectly?” Tony questions

“Meaning you don’t use Happy or Rhodey or anyone else to get to him either.”

“Smart boy, you’ve thought of everything haven’t you?”

Peter blushes “Deal or not?”

“Yes deal but I don’t wanna be interrupted or have Harley get anymore motive to try and leave the tower. So let’s go down to the lab and talk.”

Peter nods, knowing its bad enough he needs to discuss in detail to his boyfriend of what happened let alone anyone else. “Okay, I’m just going to tell Harley we’re going downstairs.”

“Be quick Petey. “

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So what are you going to do?”

Harley rolls his eyes “What is there to do Tom? I’m basically on lockdown here.” Harley props his phone up against one of his bike mechanics books while he leans against the wall next to his window.

“Stark lets you smoke in the tower?” Tommy watches the blonde light a smoke, leaning against the window.

“Pfft. Yea right. But he wants to treat me like a moody teenager then I’m going to act like one.”

Tommy laughs “You’re playing right into his hands dickhead.”

Harley rolls his eyes “Whatever, Flash is a piece of shit and something needs to be done.”

“What even happened man?”

“Well, what I can tell you is Parkers got a nasty bruise in the shape of Thompson’s palm. “

Tommy takes a sharp inhale “Fuck.”

“Yep.”

“So you want to get ahold of him before your Uncle does?”

Harley nods “but that’s not going to happen.”

Tommy shrugs “Fuck it bud. Let Stark go ape on him. He’s a piece of shit and deserves it.”

Harley takes another puff of his smoke then flicks it out “Yes because my uncle would stop short of murder.”

“Well I doubt he’d actual kill someone “

Harley shook his head. “I think you under estimate what my uncle is capable of when it comes to the ones he love.”

“Hey Harley? Can I come in?”

“Hey I gotta go, I’ll call you back in a bit”

“Alright bud.”

Harley quickly disconnected the call “Yeah c’mon in Parker.” The blonde shoves his pack of smokes and lighter in the desk drawer

Peter scrunches up his nose as he walked in “You were smoking.”

Harley shook his head. “Yes bloodhound I was smoking. Gunna rat me out?”

Peter rolled his eyes “Noo! I just can’t help that the Spidey sense makes me super sensitive with smells and stuff”

“Fair point. What’s up buttercup?” Harley flops down onto his bed, crossing his arms behind his head.

Peter sits down on the computer chair and spins it to face the other teen. “Just wanted to let you know me and Tones are going down to the lab for a few hours.”

“Oh?” Harley raises his eyebrows suggestively

Peter rolls his eyes “Get your head out of the gutter. Today is lab day anyway.”

“You know if ya’ll want some private time all you gotta do is get Stark to unban me from the rest of the tower.”

“I’m pretty sure his nephew being on the same floor would not affect him. Sound proof walls are a thing.”

Harley’s eyes widen in horror. “Please tell me you haven’t ...” When Peter doesn’t respond Harley shakes his head. “You know what? I don’t want the answer to that.”

Peter laughs. “Anyway if you need anything just let Friday know and behave!” Peter gets up and starts to walk out, stopping in the doorway to holler over his shoulder “Oh and Harley? Quit smoking, it’ll kill you”

Harley shakes his head, wondering if his room is sound proof. Now there’s a thought. Maybe he could sneak somebody in tonight after all.

#starker #starker fic #mine #superheros get bullies too #chapter 4 #new chapter #ironspiidey writes #a03 #tony is done taking shit #flash is a dick #harley keener is a good bro #harley is a good bro #endgame what endgame #tony is tired of his nephews shit #harley just wants to protect peter

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kuiperblog · 5 years

Text

Throne of Eldraine is brimming with flavor

Magic: The Gathering’s latest set brings us to a fairy-tale world. (Here’s the trailer, if you managed to miss the day or so that it was at the top of Youtube’s “trending” page:)

youtube

As more of the set is revealed, I find myself more and more impressed with the wonderful flavor of the world, and how certain parts of the game world are communicated through its mechanics.

For example, take this recently-spoiled card:

You can’t have a proper fairy tale without a damsel who is Trapped in the Tower, though of course you’ll have a tough time trapping someone in the tower if they are the kind of creature that has wings.

While Trapped in the Tower, the damsel is unable to participate in combat or lend aid to her allies, but she’s still on the field. Perhaps you might be able to rescue her.

For example, she might rely on the aid of her Fairy Godmother to get her out of the tower:

In Throne of Eldraine, creatures with this templating can “go on an adventure” (you cast the “adventure” part as a sorcery, then later you can cast the creature to summon it to the battlefield). When Faerie Guidemother “goes on an adventure,” she gives flying (and +2/+1) to a creature on the battefield. Like, for example, a creature that is enchanted by Trapped in the Tower. Remember, Trapped in the Tower can only affect creatures without flying! Once the damsel in distress has been granted flying, the enchantment that was trapping her can no longer enchant her (the enchantment is removed from the battlefield and placed in the graveyard due to this game mechanic), and she’s free to join her allies in attacking, blocking, or using activated abilities.

But there’s more than one way to rescue a damsel who’s been Trapped in the Tower. Perhaps prince charming might show up to save the day:

Whenever a creature leaves the battlefield, any enchantment auras that were attached to them “fall off” and are placed in the graveyard. So, when Charming Prince enters the battlefield, you can choose the third mode and target the princess who’s been Trapped in the Tower: the princess is temporarily removed from the battlefield, and at the end of the turn, she’ll return, effectively having been saved from being Trapped in the Tower by the Charming Prince who has come to the rescue.

Of course, Charming Prince is its own little bundle of flavor: what happens when you encounter this guy at the ball? Each of the three options he offers tells its own little story: Perhaps you’ll enjoy an insightful and stimulating conversation that will give you some interesting things to think about (”scry 2,” look at and rearrange the top 2 cards of your library). Or perhaps you’ll eat some food together (”gain 3 life”). After all, the plane of Eldraine is known for its food:

Or maybe the Charming Prince will sweep you off your feet, whisking you away from whatever danger you were in to enjoy an evening away from the battlefield, before returning you to the battlefield at the end of the night.

(Extra great naming here: of course, the Charming Prince is the prince charming that we’d all like to run into at a party. But also, in Magic, there’s a cycle of cards called “charms” that have modal effects, where you get to choose 1 of 3 effects to activate. So the Charming Prince, in offering you one of three choices when he enters the battlefield, is also a literal Charm in addition to being a human noble creature.)

Of course, decks are not limited to just playing cards from the new Eldraine set, and it’s here that it becomes clear that some princesses don’t need a Charming Prince to come rescue them. Remember that she can only be Trapped in the Tower if she lacks the ability to fly (if she gains flying, the enchantment “falls off” and is removed from play). Perhaps she has the strength to Jump down from the tower and save herself:

Or maybe she finds the courage within her to take a Mighty Leap of faith:

There are many senses in which Magic is a game in which two players competing against each other are collaboratively telling a story. I think it’s great.

#mtg #magic: the gathering #game design #card games

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aphmau-shalashaskas-dayjob · 5 years

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I am currently working on an Aphmau Au atm. This is a placeholder ((aphmau’s design will change)) But here’s the gist. Its kinda an RPG au? Like it works similarly to delta rune, or Persona 5 where there are 2 worlds. One where you fight and one where you improve your relationships with people and like talk and stuff. The other worlds name is Gamvrasia If I do write the au I’ll do like 5 different versions. ((Also Ein Aphmau & Claire are just the potential starter crew. You get ALOT more party members)) All 3 versions will have a VERY different story and a different Aphmau. In any case in the first version I’ll be working on ((I’ll just copy paste my amino post Here are some sibling headcanons for Aphmau and...Ein in an au where they were raised together ((taking some ideas from https://aminoapps.com/c/aphmauamino/page/user/queenofmelons-einchancultleader-danviscult/x46z_L7iof3aWYBv0Ydg1wX6ZZZX2kplD& https://aminoapps.com/c/aphmauamino/page/user/alice-on-elm-street-teamein/76jn_dXTBfGp5XpJJqGkP6o5eN8qPRlPD )) ((Like Eins parents being missing so he's raised by Sylvanna, and Ein dying Aphmaus hair, ect))

- Werewolves don't exist

-Forever potions don't exist

- Ultimas don't exist

- Meifwa don't exist

- Witches don't exist

FOR THE SHALASHASKA FAMILY

- Ein is overprotective and will fite any boy who tries to court Aphmau.

- Ein & Sylvanna once plotted against Aaron together

.- Ein used to bully Aphmau when they were younger but doesn't really anymore

-Sylvanna put Ein into Aphmau's life at the age of about 5. Ein was 4 years old at the time. And he had nobody in his family with the money to take care of him. Sylvanna being a saint took him in. Claire came into Aphmau’s life a bit later when she was 7 Claire was 8

- Ein loves photography and has an entire collection of still life photo & landscape photo's that he scribbled on with crayon

- Aphmau is the stronger then Ein. She had to get tough to keep this boy in line.- Aphmau's older and loves her baby brother to bits....even if he can be a little bit of a dick sometimes he's still..her baby brother. But Claire’s the strongest sibling

- Aphmau sometimes gives Ein huggle attacks and he either hates them or severely appreciates them depending on his mood.

- Ein styles Aphmau's hair all the time for her. He loves doing it. Most of the time he does what she likes which is giving it an ombre purple. ((Though he thinks she should get streaks))

- Aphmau is similarly protective over Ein and once threatened both Ein & Aaron to not hurt each other telling Aaron "If you hurt my baby brother I will beat you to death with your own bloody femurs" and telling Ein "If you hurt my boyfriend I will break your kneecaps"

- Aphmau loves painting Eins face, Claire will never let Aphmau paint her face.

- Ein is completely fine with Aphmau painting his face. He wears whatever look she gives him with pride. No matter how stupid it is. If you make fun of it he will DESTROY you for making fun of his little sister's work

- The Ein & Aphmau rough house sometimes but not very severely. More like playfighting if anything. Claire usually just avoids the fighting or hides

- When they were younger Aphmau would always play the villain while Ein played the hero. Ein was a bratty kid that always wanted to be a hero since he loves being in the spotlight. Claire would be the Damsel in distress. She thoroughly enjoyed playing the princess

- Aphmau sometimes paints Ein's nails and does his make up. He is her testing dummy. he's fine with this. As long as he gets to do her make up. Claire Also lets Aphmau do her make up. As long as she follows her instructions - Aphmau was shitty at being a villain

- Ein got a tattoo (on his butt) and never told Sylvanna about it. She still doesn't know to this day

- Ein & Sylvanna talk shit about Aaron behind his back all the time. They also do it in front of his face!

- Ein was the one who got Aphmau into Gaming, Sylvanna had bought him a game console before Aphmau because...he was a boy and Sylvanna didn't think Aphmau would be interested and Ein loved it. Aphmau would always watch him and try to get Ein to teach her how to play the games he had. He did of course. Aphmau believes if Ein had never gotten her into gaming she would have never met Aaron..this isn't true of course but. Yeah

-Claire Has that big sister pride. And enjoys being in charge

- Ein's into photography

- Ein can't spell for the life of him and is horribly dyslexic

- Aphmau's entire bloodline has a tendency to get overprotective ((whether it be from jealousy or not. You don't hurt their children/siblings. Just the ones she's blood related to though. ))

- Claire likes smooth Jazz and Tea

- Zack has like 20 kids and only knows like 3 of there names. Ein isn't the first child born from an affair he had and Ein won't be the last.

- Claire is one of those babies. ((She's a canon character watch the fnaf rp. (Also it appears to be an au of Mystreet possibly since Laurence is present in one of Aphmaus photos )))

- Claire hates horror movies and is absolutely terrified of anthropomorphic animals.

- Claire has depression and honestly has a hard time getting up in the morning

- Claire often falls for horrible people and has bad tastes in men. She has had her heart broken many times

- Claire had a stillbirth baby in the past. it was a boy. The death of this baby kickstarted her depression

- Aphmau babies Ein sometimes because when he was a little kid he had to be pampered and she can't get out of that thinking style for the life of her.

- Ein has a therapist he goes to who helps him with his problems. He has medications he has to take to keep him calm and such. Without them he becomes slightly creepier to be around...only slightly- Ein eventually warms up to Aaron over time. alongside Sylvanna

- Ein is a furry and he got a fursuit one-day Aphmau is okay with this cause it makes him happy

- Aaron is disturbed by it and Aphmau once called him out for fursecution. And lectured him for hours on it

- Ein broke Aphmau's game boy when they were little. It was an accident but still

- Ein gets really passionate about things and has a tendency to obsess. He can get lost in fantasy for hours on end. He is very obsessive.

- Ein disliked Garroth for some time....until Garroth took off his shirt. Then he liked him all of a sudden. Aphmau was very weirded out by how fast Eins mind changed.

- Ein sometimes has mini panic attacks when Aphmau goes out on dates. he realizes he can't intervene but he can't help but worry. He knows what monsters are like and he doesn't want Aphmau to get hurt by one.

- If you break Aphmau's heart Ein will come for you with an ax, & Claire will post nasty things about you on the internet

- Aphmau is slightly more violent in this au. Ein had some influence on her as a kid. It's not by a lot though. She just has very harsh threats

- Ein makes sure Aphmau can protect herself, They have workout days were they get BEEFY!

- Aphmau worries about Eins future constantly and often has nightmares about it. Sylvanna does too sometimes but less.

- Aphmau can be super sweet at some points but suddenly enter drill sergeant mode if you're acting like a little kid. She uses tough love and gentle guidance. She uses both when she sees fit.

- Aphmau paints Eins nails and does his make up sometimes. He enjoys it. it's fun for him.

- Aphmau Wears prescription glasses. and is the big nerd of the group

- when Aphmau was 7 Ein sent someone to the hospital. This was around the time when he started taking meds. It was important

- Zoey was their babysitter who is ((4 years younger than them))

- Ein & Zane never get along. ((Zane thinks Ein is a poser))

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright now for some of the things in the Gamvrasia for the normal versions of them

- Team attacks are possible. You can use special moves with another party member

- Summoning is also possible. But only if your not related ((You’d summon a “Child” like If Aphmau and Aaron did a summon it’d be Alina, If Aphmau and Laurence did a summon it’d be Malachi, If Aphmau and Garroth did a summon it’d be Levin, so on so forth. )) The summon vanishes after the battle. And the summon has the appearance of an adult - Ein gains Wolf ears in the combat world and he is very happy about that Very excited

- Aphmau gains bunny ears in this world

- Aphmau is a species called a Ouinca. ((They are buny people)) the only ability they generally have is the ability to run really fast.

- Claire Gets cat ears

- Ein howled and Aphmau was very confused. Just because you gain animal ears doesn’t mean you gain their tendencies. Ein’s just howling cause he wants to be a dog furry.

- Claire has the highest attack, she has low defence though, she Also has HORRIBLE magic attack. She has higher speed then Ein

- Aphmau has medium defense, higher attack then Ein, alot of Sp, and alright magic. Her stats can change and you can improve them manually (She’s the only one you can do this with. The others stats are predetermined ((Unless your counting Armor and stuff)). Aphmau has the highest speed

- Ein Has high magic attack, High defense, but also the lowest attack out of the 3. This does NOT mean he’s weak, however.

- Most of Eins attacks are magic ones, Though he does have a few attacking moves. Some being really brutal. But he usually just shoots lasers at you or little blasts. - Aphmau has alot of healing spells, but she also has some fire spells. Her attacks are really fast and Jumpy

- Claires Attacks are really direct, and they hit hard. She has little to no magic spells, But she does have some...distracting moves. It’s not really magic though but she can drag attention to herself very easily. And lower her enemies stats

- In Gamvrasia Aaron becomes a werewolf (Obviously) same with Melissa and pretty much any other natural born werewolf in the Aphmau series

- Garroth becomes a Giant in the Gamvrasia. he gains the ability to shrink and Grow ((He can grow and shrink various parts of his body)) but the smallest he can get his body is the proportions of a 6'5 man. ((garroth has the highest defence))

- Betty becomes a candy person in the Gamvrasia , She likes sucking on her fingers. The pink of her skin is much darker than the Salmon of her hair. Making it pop out alot more

- Laurence becomes a zombie in the Gamvrasia

- Their are 100

- In the normal world Aphmau has glasses, & her hair is down. While in the Gamvrasia she has no glasses but has a big purple bow at the back of her head with a ponytail

- Katelyn becomes a mermaid in the Gamvrasia, when on land her tail turns into scaly legs. ((They do this when they become dry enough))

- Zane is a vampire in the Gamvrasia

- Kawaii~chan and the other Meifwa are what you expect them to be in Gamvrasia

- Kawaii~Chan is more or less a mage in Gamvrasia, She controls a variety of dolls & can basically create her own little fighters that can fight for her or be turned into energy for her team. But by herself her stats are horrible.

- Aaron is younger . He's about 1 year older than aph

- Gene also becomes a vampire in the Gamvrasia

- Kim becomes a fairy in Gamvrasia, In the normal world Kim's design is that of her pre season 4 look, But while she's in the Gamvrasia she loses her need for glasses.

- When you switch from the Normal world to Gamvrasia your actually switching bodies with your Gamvrasia counterpart

- The Gamvrasia counterparts (Or vessels)) were never supposed to be conscious in the first place but because of ____ are

- The Gamvrasia are mostly not very nice. Some are though, most of them aren't horrible. But they can be rude

- I’ll probably make entire pages for each of the gamvrasia peeps.

- Solving problems in the Rpg/combat world fixes problems in the normal world as well, Some monsters in the combat world or even normal people can affect real world people near their area. If 2 people are fighting somewhere in the Gamvrasia, People will begin feeling uneasy around that area in the real one, and accidents will become more frequent. Large scale monster attacks in Gamvrasia can cause Natural disasters, Terrorist attacks, Car crashes, Fires, Mass murder, Potentially genocide, Bombings, Ect.

-There are 5 chosen legendary hero’s in gamvrasia, each one specializing in a certain stat. Having the highest ___ stat of the cast. These heroes are Aphmau, Aaron, Garroth, Travis, & Kalzul.

- I’ll talk more about Gamvraisia and their counterparts in a future post

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The shadow Knights & Aaron

Aaron & Melissa are slightly closer to their parents.

Derek is less “NO TALKING TO ANYONE” to his son. since Ultima’s don’t exist

Aaron had a rebellious phase for a little bit. Derek absolutely hated it.

The shadow knights was founded by Aaron when he was like 13-14 when he started it I think He's 17 currently in the Au. It started out as this big Gang who did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Over time the number of Shadow Knights dwindled people mainly left due to being disinterested, Being kicked out, or getting themselves killed trying to do something "hardcore" ((The death was a big wake up call for alot of the members which led them to kinda...leave))

Aaron - The leader of the Shadow Knights, left after some time due to disinterest, & Guilt over indirectly getting Glenda Killed. He was not quite as nice as he is now during that point in time. Aaron also just became...too mature for alot of the childish games the Shadow Knights played which was another reason why he left.

Gene - Second in command. Aarons right hand man, & one of the big recruiters of the shadow knights. He's more of the jack of all trades in the group, being able to spraypaint, Fight, Get good deals on..things, & Being able to forge doctors notes as well. He usually carries a knife around with him. He became the leader after Aaron Left.

Sasha - You know how sasha is. She mainly just uses the Shadow knights as a cool place to hang out. She's also the best at stealing shit. One of the last three members

Zenix - Do you need explosives? well you came to the right guy! They never really use Explosives on people-...but they do blow up cars, in like desolate area’s. He stuck by Gene & Sasha after everyone else left. They are having trouble getting new members.

Zane - A kid Aaron recruited that the others aren't quite fond of. He immediately got kicked out as soon as Gene became leader. Gene's loss.

Amethyst - An old lady that can kick your ass in 7 different ways. She eventually left for probably obvious reasons...like being old, and being really sweet. And being like super sweet too sweet for the shadow knights. ((its not like she doesn't have a dark side though)) She's dead now.

Glenda - The shadow knight that died. She got herself killed trying to preform a really "HARDCORE" stunt. The rest of the shadow knights hid her body and never really told anyone what happened to her. The guilt eats at alot of the other members to this day.

Alexis - A really spunky lil kid with a LOT of moxie. She's a little girl with a gun. She really should not have a gun where are her parents omfg((Aaron usually took it away from her, or made sure it wasn't loaded...she didn't know that though. Eventually he switched it out for a fake and got rid of the old one. She never really pulled the trigger so she didn't notice.))- She left after getting caught and grounded. Laurence - He left after Glenda got herself killed. He blames most of the other shadow knights for not trying to stop her. ((when he did)) and hates a few of them((Like Aaron)) thinking of them as killers.

Vincint - One of the other shadow knights that left due to the death of Glenda. That and he was just...disinterested. he became apathetic towards the motto of the shadow knights and just kinda...leftTheir are a few other members scattered about. But the only ones stationed in Magisarav ((The town they live in)) are Gene, Sasha, & Zenix. Laurence really doesn’t like him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Gamvraisa vessels

A vast majority of them are assholes, that want to destroy humanity.

- Gamvraisia Aphmau seems nice.

- Gamvrasia Ein is more like mystreet Ein. Even to the point where he wants to bone his sister. ((Though he doesn’t really view Gamvrasia aphmau as his sister, in his words " Oh come on. It's not like we're related by blood or anything? The only thing linking us together as "Siblings" is the relationship between the two of us in the humans world, It's not like we have parents or anything. I really don't see why your so adamant about defining us as such." ))

^ Gamvraisa Aphmau is Grossed out by this.

- He also has an entire freaking city that he enslaved that's named. Ein city, he isn't very creative at naming things. in the center of a city is a giant gold statue of him with a golden crown and Aphmau leaning up against him. ((Aphmau is also a werewolf in that statue, theirs no real way to turn her into one normally though)) I think the best way for me to showcase his personality is through shitposts though.

- Gamvrasia Aaron on the other hand is Gamvrasia Aphmau’s Ex who wants to kill her. For a variety of reasons

Gamvrasia Garroth steals all the time, and uses his size to get away with things.

Gamvrasia Zane ...is just diaries zane tbh. Without the royalty.

I’ll go more into the indivisual Characters later.

And that’s all, for now, I hope you like the au

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